Hi team

The BT book classifies threats according to three dimensions:

• External | Internal | Latent
• Anticipated | Unexpected
• Environmental (beyond our control) | Organisational (with better planning & thought, org threats can be controlled/minimised),

However, reading CAP 5.59-1, I am wondering if a better schema would be as follows:

• External (ref 13.2.5) | Internal (ref 13.2.6
• Anticipated (ref 14.1.1) | Unexpected (ref 14.1.1)| Latent (ref 14.1.2)
• Environmental | Organisational (ref 14.1.1)

Latent threats are clearly identified as a third classification in addition to anticipated and unexpected. Generally, an organisational threat will also be latent (ie. a mistake waiting to happen that, had proper thought and planning be applied or better policy observed, could have been avoided).

Examples:

• Poorly designed checklist: External (condition of a/c?) | Latent | Organisational
• Pilot stress due to job pressure: Internal | Latent | Organisational

Thoughts?

Cheers,

H

Well, would you believe it - I have just made that change to the book last week. I grouped the latent threats with Anticipated and Unexpected.

CASA have made an awful mess of this TEM stuff. I agree such a topic is worthwhile investigating, but I don't agree that asking students to identify types of threats, errors and undesired aircraft states along with countermeasures is the way to go about it. There are countless examples of threats that just do not neatly fit into one of those boxes. Some threats are external, environmental, latent and unexpected all at once!

I'm left with the unpleasant situation of telling students that this or that is such and such a threat because the CAAP says so, rather than because logical reasoning supports the argument.