Blue-sky thinking

By the time you read this, with any luck, I’ll have completed my private helicopter licence, bringing to a close 45 hours of training, eight exams and many flight tests over two years.

And it has got me thinking: flying is a lot like construction.

How? They are both highly subcontracted. The risk of failure in both is equally high. The rate of technical innovation in both is exponential.

The legislative mandates are equally severe and the ultimate penalties are a dead heat.

But in the most important way, risk management, aviation leaves construction in the dust.

Learning to fly is a bit like learning to drive. I used to look way down at the pedals and at that massive Highway Code and wonder how so many people passed. Now, after nearly 40 years, I can take a call, tune the radio, listen to Doris the Sat-Nav lady tell me where to go (and my two kids asking when we’re going to get there) and automotive intelligence takes care of the driving.

Only a small part of flying is driving an airborne vehicle. The rest is planning, analysing, managing and eliminating risk.

Take the training. Any pilot will tell you that training is about repeating a process endlessly so that it becomes automatic. You need hours of circuits, landings and take-offs, simulated engine and instrument failures, all so that you react with “automotive intelligence” to any situation.

Then you analyse a plethora of meteorological data, calculate fuel loads, find out to whom you need to talk before and during flight – all before you even clap eyes on the aircraft. Then follows an exhaustive pre-flight aircraft examination.

So is flying safer than building? Where are you more likely to die: travelling on a UK commercial airline or working on a UK building site? The last time British Airways had a fatal crash was 20 years ago.

The big thing aviation has on construction is joined-up standards by joined-up people. ISO 9000 owes its very existence to Boeing, who needed to control the quality of output from its thousands of suppliers and subcontractors. And what about the rules? Building folk have had a lot longer to get it right than flyers. Wilbur and Orville managed powered flight only 100 years ago. The principles of aviation law were laid down by The Chicago Convention of 1944, when most of the civilised nations agreed upon a set of articles to govern flying internationally.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation was formed three years later and, to this day, remains the only worldwide governing body.

There are few variances between nations. Not even the mighty USA adopts different rules, except they cling to inches in measuring atmospheric pressure.

My licence is recognised internationally and is likely to be accepted by just about any state. I will have been rated to fly in a certified machine, in a highly regulated environment, to worldwide standards.

Construction has layers of often contradictory law, from by-laws to national and then European regulations.

There are no international conventions, other than standard Codes of Practice, advisories or Best Practice notes, all emanating from more Quangos, special interest organisations and institutes than you can shake a stick at. There is no effective barrier to entry for construction managers, our pilots, and the standard in the competency of people varies widely.

So is aviation a lot like construction? I wish.