Kern Calls for ‘Thinking Differently’ About Aviation Safety

Convergent Performance CEO Tony Kern claimed that more recent social and business aviation industry shifts have generated a need for rethinking safety approaches and programs in his keynote address this morning at the Business Aviation Safety Summit (BASS) in New Orleans. He asserted that “we are in an unprecedented time, and we cannot use old modes of thinking,” citing the generational hand-off, pressures to balance life and work, and personnel shortages as some of the issues causing safety shifts.

At BASS, which was hosted jointly by NBAA and the Flight Safety Foundation, Kern offered delegates advice on “learning to think differently,” beginning with cultivating a beginner’s mind, or “Shoshin” in Zen Buddhism. “Experience tends to blind us to changes and new threats,” he observed.

Kern contends that empathy and compassion, as opposed to regulatory conformity, should be the cornerstones upon which safety management systems and other safety programs are developed.

The future demands on professionals, according to him, include the need to “assume less, verify more,” and “communicate more and better—not just with people, but with machines.” Psychiatric problems are now having a bigger influence on safety, according to Kern, who urged the industry to “address mental health challenges, absolutely, positively head on.”