Ethics in Aviation

  Aviation Security: Hijacking   The morning of September 11 th of 2001 will live in infamy after 3000 people were killed due to a terrorist attack. A terrorist Islamic group hijacked 4 civil aircraft performing commercial operations and crashed two of them against the World Trade Center, one against the Pentagon and the last one did not reach its objective of destroying the white house. After these events, the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) was created to prevent a similar situation to occur (Burns, 2017). Everybody knows that an aircraft hijack is the illegal seizure of an aircraft. To prevent hijacking or other terrorist attacks to occur, TSA has several layers of security. For example, when a passenger is booking a flight, TSA checks that the passenger is not a known criminal or a person who had had unruly behaviors on previous flights. That means that if you are an unruly passenger that endanger the lives of other people, you could be banned from flyi...

 The pressurization system permits normal operation at high altitudes. Modern aircraft usually fly at high altitudes, where the oxygen partial pressure is not enough for the human body. ( Federal Aviation Administration, 2022) Almost every pressurized aircraft has a sealed cabin capable of containing air at a higher pressure than outside. In order to pressurize the cabin, the pressurization system takes air from the compressor stage of the engine; this air is known as bleed air. Pressurization systems are made to maintain a cabin altitude of no more than 8000 feet at the cruise phase and normally are automatically controlled. Failure of this system could entail a loss of cabin pressure which may be catastrophic depending on the circumstances. Giving an example, a malfunction of the outflow valve may produce a slow depressurization. This type of depressurization is the most dangerous because it is difficult to identify. Therefore, modern aircraft have cabin altitude gauges, cabin ...

 Many environmental factors affect the performance of every aircraft, such as temperature, wind, or ice. Still, today I am going to focus on operations in high-elevation airports because these airports are common in my country. Have you ever noticed that when we are at high elevations, our physical performance decreases? Well, the same thing happens with airplanes. Airframe and engine performance are degraded as the altitude increases because static pressure (P s ) and air density ( ρ) decrease; that is, air molecules are more spaced from each other than they would be at sea level. Thus, the true airspeed (TAS) must be increased because you need to compensate for air density reduction. As a rule of thumb, airports located at high elevations have long runways because take-off and landing runs are increased, and engine performance is reduced. However, it is crucial to do exhaustive performance calculations before attempting either a take-off or a landing from one of these airports,...

  Aviation is a wonderful and passionate field. However, it demands of a high level of responsibility and high standards in order to achieve a safe operation. A pilot for example, is responsible from the lives of hundreds of people sited behind him or her. Thus, any mistake could result in a catastrophic accident. Same as the aircraft mechanic, if he or she make a mistake, even a small one, the safety of the flight will be compromised. All the other aviation activities require high standards and qualified workforce in order to avoid loss of human lives and expensive damages. On November 29 th , 2016, an AVRO RJ85 crashed before attempting its approach to Medellin. The cause of the accident was that they ran out of fuel. It is obvious that this is not the first accident due to this cause, however, I wanted to bring it up because there was an appreciable lack of ethics in this case. Long story short, they departed from Santa Cruz, Bolivia with only the trip fuel, so they did not co...