ACC sets record year for safety

  • Published
LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. (ACCNS) --  Air Combat Command set a new command flying safety record and reduced the number of serious injuries to a five-year low, making fiscal year 2004 one of the safest the command has ever seen.

The command saw reductions in three key areas - flight mishap rate, number of injuries
reported, and number of active duty deaths, according to statistics released by the ACC
Directorate of Safety. While ACC leaders laud the efforts to reduce mishaps and injuries,
they stress there is still room to improve in efforts to protect the command's most valuable
resource - its people.

"People are the command's number one resource," said Gen. Hal Hornburg, ACC commander. "The loss of even one individual has an impact on our morale, readiness and warfighting capability. So the ultimate goal is to have zero mishaps. We can't accomplish the mission without taking care of our people."

In flying operations, ACC's Flight Safety Office lauded fiscal 2004 as the safest in the
command's history. The command had only five class A mishaps, yielding a rate of 1.34 per
100,000 flying hours. The previous year had seen 12 class A flight mishaps for a rate of
3.23 per 100,000 flying hours.

Command safety officials said the 58 percent reduction demonstrates ACC supervisors and
aircrews are very serious about safety.

It was also demonstrated in the weapons arena, officials said. The command continued its
string of perfect years, finishing with zero class A mishaps for the fourth straight year.

On the ground side, one of the focus areas of the safety campaign was the annual 101
Critical Days of Summer. The statistics for 2004 show a five-year low in the number of
reported injuries. The number of active duty deaths also dropped compared to 2003.

"The statistics indicate ACC personnel are employing the basic principles of personal risk
management," said Senior Master Sgt. Cliff Motley of the ACC Ground Safety Office. "More
precisely, our command's mishaps reduction accomplishments can be directly attributed to
vigorous safety planning, proactive safety initiatives and the direct involvement by our
leaders, managers and supervisors."

Comparing the 2004 and 2003 campaigns, sports and recreation injuries dropped 17 percent; automobile mishaps fell 46 percent; and on-duty accidents decreased 35 percent.

While the number of motorcycle injuries increased by 12 percent, the number of fatal, class
A motorcycle mishaps decreased by 20 percent during the 101 Critical Days of Summer
campaign, and has decreased by 23 percent for the fiscal year. This contributed to the
command's success in reducing the number of overall fatal mishaps during this year's
campaign by 17 percent.

While the statistics are a positive trend, command leaders stress it doesn't mean the work
in improving safety and safety awareness is over.

"We lost 10 ACC members to fatal mishaps this summer -- 10 irreplaceable warriors," said Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, ACC vice commander. "We're certainly improving, but we must continue to educate and re-educate all our Airmen on the basic principles of ACT."

ACT is an acronym for assessing the situation, considering the options, and taking the
appropriate actions to stay alive.

Everyone can use the principles of ACT to accomplish personal risk assessment, according to Sergeant Motley.

"If everyone took the extra two minutes to consider the risks, assess the situations, and take the necessary actions to ensure personal safety, it would certainly decrease the number of safety mishaps throughout the command and the entire Air Force," he said.

Educating people on the ACT principles has played a big part in continuing safety campaigns, but it isn't the only safety initiative used to help people stay safe, Sergeant Motley said. Another cornerstone of ACC's success was the implementation of safety game plans.

"The safety game plan required each ACC unit to develop, implement and monitor their
programmatic solutions to potentially high mishap areas," he said. "This initiative helped
units focus on areas they believed warranted increased safety emphasis. The safety game
plans placed the proper emphasis on personal safety to help ensure everyone in ACC remains alive and well to accomplish the Air Force mission simply by acting responsible and having an established safety plan."