HMN 2025: Conflicts that occur elsewhere must occur elsewhere.

You know the saying, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?” To that end, I have long advised my clients to let conflicts that originate elsewhere stay elsewhere. Safety standards vary. In some cases, the difference is like night and day. If you’re worried about a crash in a country you don’t fly to or on an airline you don’t fly to, you’re worried for no reason.

Safety standards, or measures to make aviation safe, are similar in developed countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. If you only fly to these countries, events elsewhere are irrelevant. However, when flying to different parts of the world, you need to consider differences in safety.

There is a very simple way to take these standards into account. Where the level of medical care is high, aviation standards are usually also high, so consider what level of care you have. If you could get surgery cheaper in another country, would you do it? If you were traveling to another country and needed medical treatment, would you rather get treatment there or go somewhere else? If you want to avoid treatment in country XYZ, you may want to avoid airlines based in country XYZ.

An accident occurred in Korea. Aviation standards are generally good. But Korea has a unique problem. There are few airports where pilots can practice flying an airplane by hand. Some reports suggest that the average American amateur pilot is better at manual flying than the average Korean professional pilot.

Lack of hand flying skills played a role in the crash of South Korea-based Asiana Airlines Flight 214 at San Francisco Airport on July 6, 2013. It was a beautiful, sunny day, the kind of day a doctor or lawyer might drive a Cessna. Just for fun. But there was a problem. I was in the process of relocating the ILS transmitter antenna. There was no ILS signal for the autopilot to use to land the plane. This would not have been a problem for most airline pilots. But for these pilots, landing the plane by hand was more than they could handle.

The captain was in the left seat. The instructor pilot was sitting in the right seat. The co-pilot rode in the jump seat. To ensure that planes do not land too close to the runway, the target spot for landing should be about 1/4 mile past the end of the runway. Incredibly, these airline pilots failed to do what amateur pilots routinely do. They crashed into the breakwater. The breakwater is more than a quarter of a mile from where the plane was supposed to land. The plane then slid forward onto the runway. When the plane stopped, all passengers were able to get off the plane. Unfortunately, a fire truck arriving at the scene hit two passengers.

This accident should help make it clear that when you’re worried about flying, what happens elsewhere stays elsewhere.