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Sam monitoring the teams during an Interlab mission Recently, Sam and I delivered a training session for a large team. It was built around detailed discussion, rich storytelling, and two missions using the Interpersonal Skills Lab (Interlab) software to show the value of and teach briefing and debriefing. There were 36 participants in total. The energy was high and the engagement was strong. The room was buzzing, and that included us, not just the participants! The feedback w

F-35 on takeoff. Image courtesy of 354th Fighter Wing Public Affairs On 28 January 2025, a USAF F-35A was destroyed during operations at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. The pilot ejected safely. There was no hostile action and no single, obvious technical failure that immediately explains what happened. Instead, the Accident Investigation Board (AIB) describes a complex, unfamiliar problem involving landing gear abnormalities, contaminated hydraulic fluid, frozen components,

Renee Good, moments prior to being shot. Image courtesy of CNN. In the aftermath of tragedy, one thing happens almost immediately these days: video footage appears. Phone recordings, CCTV clips, body-worn cameras; all fragments of reality, replayed millions of times. And almost just as quickly, opinions harden. People watch the same footage and arrive at radically different conclusions about what they’ve seen, what it means, and where to point fingers. The recent fatal shooti

Final resting place of the B-1B that crashed at Ellsworth AFB in January 2024. Image courtesy of the US Air Force On 4 January 2024, a USAF bomber was destroyed during operations at Ellsworth Air Force Base. No hostile action. No mechanical failure in the traditional sense. No dramatic chain of obvious errors. Instead, the Accident Investigation Board (AIB) describes a sequence of events shaped by crosschecking breakdowns, ineffective crew coordination, supervision gaps, and

Image courtesy of @visagrad24 on X captures the moment the fire started. When the recent bar fire in Switzerland killed 40 people, public attention moved quickly to accountability and blame. Within days, one person had been arrested: the bar owner. At first glance, that feels reasonable. The owner operated the venue. Modifications had been made. The fire started there. If someone must be held responsible, surely it’s the person “closest” to the event. The issue with this log

Image courtesy of Ventura County Fire Department In September 2019, the dive vessel MV Conception  caught fire off the coast of California, killing 34 people as they slept below deck. It remains one of the deadliest maritime disasters in modern US history. In the aftermath, public attention quickly narrowed. One individual, the captain, was prosecuted. The narrative became familiar: lack of crew training, dereliction of duty, and failure to enforce standards. And yet, when we

AI image of a Cessna 206 over Brisbane On 24 July 2025, a Cessna 206 departed Archerfield airport, Queensland, Australia just minutes before last light. It was a routine training flight planned under instrument flight rules (IFR). The instructor and student had submitted an IFR flight plan with a 17:30 departure time, comfortably before last light at 17:39. As aviation often reminds us, routine creates the perfect space for small shifts to grow into real hazards. The aircraft

AI image of a Qantas Link Dash 8 on the runway at Wagga Wagga On 15 July 2024 at Wagga Wagga Airport (Australia), a QantasLink Dash 8 and a Piper PA-28 came dangerously close to occupying the same runway at the same time. No one behaved recklessly.Both aircraft made all the required calls. Both crews believed they had a good picture of what was happening. Both operated exactly as their procedures expect. And yet, they still converged. The ATSB’s report explains the timeline,

Image of the crashed helicopter courtesy of ATSB On 5 October 2025, a Schweizer 269C-1 helicopter departed Lake Macquarie Airport for what should have been a simple ferry flight to Duri, New South Wales. The pilot had just collected the aircraft after its annual service. This was to be a routine flight, one they’d done many times before. Before take-off, the pilot looked at the fuel gauge: 92 litres. The number matched expectations, and the aircraft had just come from mainten

On the night of June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, vanished over the Atlantic Ocean. The aircraft crashed after entering an aerodynamic stall from which it never recovered, killing all 228 people on board. What intrigued investigators wasn’t just that a modern, sophisticated airliner could fall out of the sky, it was how it fell out of the sky. There was no explosion, no catastrophic mechanical failure, no storm that shoul

The Wreckage of Asiana Flight 214. Image courtesy of the NTSB On July 6, 2013, Asiana Airlines Flight 214, a Boeing 777 from Seoul, approached San Francisco International Airport under clear skies. As the aircraft neared the runway, it was far too low and too slow. The tail struck the seawall, the fuselage broke apart, and three passengers died. Miraculously, 304 others survived. At first glance, it looked like yet another a classic case of “pilot error”, a failure to monitor

Depiction of the Tenerife Airport Disaster On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747 Jumbo Jets, one operated by KLM, the other by Pan Am, collided on a fog-covered runway at Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife. Five hundred and eighty-three people were killed. This is still the deadliest accident in aviation history and it was essentially caused by humans trying to do their jobs in difficult conditions. By communicating, making decisions and managing pressure in a system that allowed mis

Image of the wreckage taken from the NTSB report In March 2023, a Beech Baron 58P crashed just after takeoff from Lubbock Executive...

Wreckage of Flight 81. By National Transportation Safety Board On July 31, 2008, East Coast Jets Flight 81, a Hawker Beechcraft 125-800A,...

Optus CEO Stephen Rue fronted the media to apologise for the devastating outage. Photo: Optus press conference In September 2025, Optus...

2 North American T6s the instant before collision Accident investigation reports are meant to do more than describe what happened. Their...

Empowering a team is like handing them the keys to a high-performance vehicle. You don’t just want them to drive; you want them to race,...

Image from the final accident report of the F-15D in the irrigation ditch In May 2023, an F-15D from the Oregon Air National Guard...

F/A-18 Classic Hornet at Sunrise over the Arabian Gulf "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy."  This famous line from...

RAF Harrier G77A on board a RN aircraft carrier just about to launch “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” This old military...