Jilly Murphy Memorial Scholarship for Aviation Safety: Smarter Airside Driving
The Project: Free Online Training for Everyone
Much like the airport airside environment, the responsibility for airside driving safety is shared between airports, airline agents, airline servicing companies, Airways and anybody else that has a need to drive airside. Airports have regulatory obligations under Civil Aviation Rule 139 to ensure that all airside drivers are familiar the airport's procedures (that's 139.119(e) for all the regulation nerds out there) and each driver's employer is responsible for ensuring the driver is competent at their job.
But is this enough?
The project I pitched to the Scholarship judges was to address a gap we'd identified at Queenstown Airport in our airside driving control system. And that gap was the "softer" skills necessary to have a safe shared & dynamic environment.
The concept of human factors has been around in aviation for over 60 years. In recent times, these "non-technical skills" have been reaching beyond the cockpit into the cabin, in the turnaround and now, we'd like to extend them into the airside driving environment.
The Training Course
There are three main aspects to the free online training course:
Personal Performance
This section will consist of a range of short videos on how our bodies impact on our ability to work well. Topics will include fatigue, drugs & alcohol and general fitness.
Working Together
This section will look into team factors such as communication, authority and just culture.
What is Everyone Else Doing?
This section will be designed to provide airside drivers with a broad understanding of what everyone else is doing out on the airfield. This will be a series of interviews and ride-alongs taken from the driver's view in an operational environment.
About the Jilly Murphy Memorial Scholarship for Aviation Safety
Jilly worked for Airways for 20 years as a highly skilled controller and was loved and respected by her colleagues at the Christchurch Airport. Unfortunately, Jilly died in central Christchurch during the earthquake of February 22, 2011.
Aviation safety was very important to her and her family is supporting the scholarship because of its focus on that.
In her memory, Airways Corporation & Christchurch Airport established a $5000 scholarship to support a project or person which contributes to improved aviation safety in New Zealand.
The scholarship fund may be used for learning, resources, equipment or to supplement income for a person focussed on aviation safety. The project could be research, a process, a product or anything else than enhances aviation safety.
For more information please contact communications@airways.co.nz
Help Wanted
In order to produce this course, we're going to need help from airports, airlines, ground handling companies and airline servicing companies (caterers and refuelers).
Dan Parsons has already been in contact with some of these organisations but if you would like to help out, please send Dan an email or contact him using the buttons below.