Document Type: Presentation (Industry).

Purpose: Informational.

Authority: Author Expertise.

Scope: 19th Wings Club General Harold R. Harris "Sight" Lecture, presented on April 21, 1982 at the Wings Club, New York City by Jerome Lederer, the first Director of the Safety Bureau of the Civil Aeronautics Board (1940) and later managing director of the Flight Safety Foundation. "Often referred to as 'Mr. Flight Safety'."

Contents (from the Introduction): "It has been eleven years since C.R. Smith, the retired President and then Chairman of the Board of American Airlines, gave his excellent Wings Club Sight Lecture on "Safety in Air Transportation." He gave the impressive statistic for 1970 of 99.999999 percent of flights completed without a fatal crash by U.S. scheduled airlines. He must be pleased to know that for the years 1980 and 1981 it was 100% for the same airlines. But several very close calls and recent accidents leave no room for complacency. Much of our present air transport safety record of about one million hours per fatal crash can be traced to the leadership of C.R. Smith, Wm. A. Patterson of United Air-lines, and several of their peers, under the umbrella of government policy. I plan to supplement, not repeat C.R.'s observations.

These Sight Lectures were kindled in 1963 by former Wings Club President (for 1958), General Harold R. Harris. He also summed up the spirit which underlies aviation's endeavors to improve safety in a statement he made about 30 years ago while he was a Vice-President of Pan American World Airways. He said: "Anxiety never disappears in a human being in an airplane — it merely remains dormant when there is no cause to arouse it. Our challenge is to keep it forever dormant."