Safety is the heartbeat of the aviation industry: Lufthansa

Star Alliance says its mission is to ensure that its members meet safety standards but that security issues can be beyond its authority.

Safety is the heartbeat of the aviation industry, which survives because people are convinced they will be transported safely, said Robert Schroeder, the check captain of Lufthansa’s Airbus A340 aircraft. 

“We fly incredibly safe. We fly with fuel that’s about a third of the maximum take-off weight of the aircraft. We fly at 82 per cent of the speed of sound and we fly in the frigid oxygen-starved air of high altitude with nothing to separate us from this environment but a few millimetres of aluminium skin,” he said.

Schroeder said what helped the aviation industry keep a global rate of one accident for every 2.4 million flights (according to International Air Transport Association statistics) was the culture of making an in-depth analysis of every plane crash to pinpoint the exact cause of the accident and standardise investigation procedures. 

“We fly safely because the industry assumes people screw up,” he said. “Aeroplanes are made by humans and flown by humans. So we have to understand and accept that humans can cause errors. After analysing plane crashes in the past century, we have come to the conclusion that human ego is responsible for most of them.”