A newly formed European office says forty years of engine failure findings differ only in the nouns, and has published the definitive template accordingly.
After investigators found a detached fan blade shattered a Ryanair cabin window in July, a newly formed European office has published a pre-written incident report with blanks for the date, airline and component. Low-fare carriers have welcomed the reform as a triumph of lean regulation. The Directorate's next project is a universal template for airline press statements.
The preliminary findings into July's Ryanair flight from Greece to Germany, in which a detached engine fan blade shattered a cabin window and partly drew a passenger out of it, arrived this week from America's National Transportation Safety Board with all the shock of a returning franchise. Metal fatigued. Metal departed. Metal met glass. The audience, having sat through the previous instalments, filed out of the cinema before the credits.
Which is why the newly constituted European Directorate of Anticipatory Findings has this week published what it describes as the last preliminary report anyone will ever need to write: a four-page document containing three blank fields, marked date, operator and component, and one optional box for the word "uncontained".
"We compared every preliminary engine report published since 1971 and found the prose identical to within a rounding error," said Directorate spokeswoman Ingrid Vasseur, presenting the template in a Brussels room with the enthusiasm of a woman shown her own diary. "The blade separates. The debris travels. The report notes that the debris travelled. The recommendation is that debris should ideally not travel. We have simply removed the typing."
The Directorate stresses that safety is not being diminished, merely pre-formatted. Investigators will still visit the site, still recover the fragments, still lay them out on a hangar floor in the shape of the thing they used to be. They will simply no longer be required to explain the concept of a fan blade to a public that has now had it explained on five continents.
"You may fill in a date. You may fill in a carrier. What you may not do is pretend to be surprised."
The industry responds warmly
Low-fare operators have welcomed the reform with the speed of men who have spotted an efficiency. Anton Kessel of the Association of Continental Value Carriers called the template "a triumph of lean regulation", noting that his members could now be found at fault in under a minute, freeing staff for revenue-generating duties.
"Previously an investigation consumed months of correspondence," Kessel said. "Now the finding arrives before the aircraft is even back in service, which our scheduling department describes as genuinely disruptive thinking." He declined to say whether passengers would be charged for access to the completed form, adding only that nothing at his members' airlines is included in the fare and never has been.
One is reminded, inevitably, of the shipping inquiries of the last century, which established repeatedly that water enters through holes. Vasseur says the Directorate's next project is a universal template for aviation press statements, currently a single sentence reading: "Our thoughts are with those affected, and the incident is a reminder of the robustness of our safety culture."
Asked what the Directorate would do if an incident occurred that its template could not describe, Vasseur paused for some time. "That," she said, "would be a new film."
