As I am sitting in the library here, I see three books on my table. They are: aircraft performance and design; synthesis of subsonic airplane design and aircraft design: a conceptual approach. You get the drift I suppose. I’m currently in a group project design for an aircraft. As I am attend my lectures for this course, my lecturer never failed to raise (or scream) the points that a) we would most likely all end up working at McDonalds because we are so incompetent and useless and b) we need to realise how important is it for us to be thorough and responsible with the engineering work that we will do in the future.

I’ve had this lecturer since last year so I have expected this from him every time and I always know that he means well. Deep down, he’s a really good man with extreme dedication and passion to the aviation industry. He puts on the tough act and look because it is and it will always be necessary. As a budding engineer, the chances of me being in a design team for a whole aircraft are slim because most engineers do analytical work on the side and design small parts of the aircraft. That’s just how it is but regardless of whether we are designing a screw or in charge of the whole aircraft, we will then do well to remember what my lecturer said, “We are responsible for human lives.”

I know I have written a few posts regarding aircraft incidents, primarily being ‘Fight or Flight‘ and ‘Cable Car‘. Without realising, I expressed two separate emotions in them with one being hope and the other being faith. Natural progression says I should talk about love in this one but how can I still talk about love when details from the Germanwings crash investigations states that the pilot is responsible for bringing the aircraft down and that he was mentally ill. My friend went on to say, “Humans are evil, eh?”. How can I sit here and write about faith and hope in humanity when a man brought down 149 people with him deliberately? I talked about still having hope regardless of what happens and that I will always have faith in humanity but I wasn’t the passenger on board. I am not the one who has family on board. How can say these things when I haven’t the slightest idea of what they are going through? It saddens me.

When I was in Foundation Studies, i.e. the year before I entered university, one of my tutors asked me, “What do you plan to study?”. I replied, “You are going to think I’m weird but I planned to to study aerospace engineering and science majoring in psychology.” He then said, “Well that is rather unique and unusual but you know what’s the common element in that?” I asked, “What?” He responded, “Humans.”

I took it at surface then and didn’t think about it too much but he is right. The common element between psychology and engineering is indeed, humans. In fact, it’s the common element of everything. In a machine driven and autonomous era, humans are still the root of everything. Air crashes still happen primarily because of human error. We can never ever escape from that. Even if it is a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), the people who designed and build it are humans.

You might be wondering, “Why are you still writing about this? There have been so many aircraft accidents and yet you are still writing about this.” A friend in Darwin was listening in on the radio station. When the news of the crash broke out, the broadcaster announced, “Unfortunately I must announce that 2 of the 150 is Australian” and that was the headline they ran with. Do you find that insensitive or it’s alright for an Australian radio company to take interest in their own people first? I then told my friend that news station and radio companies might be desensitized by now after reporting so many cases over so many years. Wouldn’t it be normal to be desensitized?

My lecturer told us the other day, “A lot of aircraft operations are still controlled by pilots and not by a computer system is because of this. If people get short changed by let’s say ten bucks by a human teller accidentally compared to a computer system, they are more likely to sympathize with the human teller and would most likely scream at the machine and be enraged by it. Interesting, isn’t it?”

I am still writing about this because I don’t want to ever get desensitized by this. I don’t want to read news of a car crash in the paper or a fire in a building and think it’s normal and okay. I’m not affected. Everything is good. I don’t want to ever be that! Human lives are lost here! How can we as a human race lose sensitivity on that? Every single human life is important. It doesn’t matter if it’s lost on an aircraft, fire, mugging, cancer and natural circumstances, every single one is important.

Everyday could very well be our last day. If we live our lives to the best of our abilities, then we will have no regrets. If we live our lives remembering to be responsible for people around you, then we will have no regrets. My lecturer won’t realize this but I will remember what he said to me for the rest of my life and live by it. It saddens me that we forget that but I can’t change what some people think.  We can only change ourselves, I can only change myself and that’s as good a start as any.

We must remember that in everything we do. We have to be responsible for ourselves as well as other people. We can never lose sight of that for we are at the root of everything. We connect everything. We are the common element.