Defining the Highway to the Dangerzone: Risk, Systems-Thinking and Boundary-Making for Pulling Crazy Stunts
A recent stunt organised by Red Bull saw two men attempting a mid-air plane swap. This event got us thinking about the considerations that go into organising a stunt like this and how boundaries and systems thinking can help with managing risk.
This blog post was written by Zena Assaad and Tom Chan
On April 24th 2022 two pilots performed an aerial stunt which involved flying two separate aircraft to a predetermined height, jumping out of their respective aircraft, leaving them unmanned, then parachuting into each other’s aircraft.
One of the stuntmen was successful in parachuting into the other aircraft, gaining control and landing the aircraft successfully on the ground. However, the second stuntman was not as successful. As he was not able to parachute into the aircraft, the ‘safety mechanism’ of that aircraft - a parachute - was activated. The video of the stunt does not show the landing of this aircraft, however, various articles note that the aircraft was ‘damaged’. The FAA has since opened an investigation into the crash and claims the stunt was never approved as the agency could not “find that the proposed operation would not adversely affect safety.” [1]
From the outset, this stunt seems rather extreme and, aside from proving that the stunt can be done, there is not much more justification for its purpose. While a custom manufactured airbrake was trialled during this event to hold the aircraft in a controlled descent, there is very little demonstration of innovation in this stunt to begin to justify the risk it incurs. It seems that this stunt fell into the trap of attempting to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
The dichotomy between risk and innovation is a challenging trade off that has demonstrated examples of success and failure. The Wright brothers performed several daring stunts, the success of which motivated further developments in aviation technology [2]; however, these stunts weren’t without consequence as some did result in the deaths of participants [3].
When considering the proposal of this stunt, the likelihood of an aircraft plummeting to the ground would seem quite high and it would follow that the consequences of this risk would be catastrophic. The mitigation for this risk was the deployment of a parachute. Aircraft parachutes, particularly for small aircraft, are not uncommon. In fact, the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) has demonstrated success on a number of occasions. But these incidents involved a pilot within the aircraft and the parachute being deployed in a timely manner. This stunt did result in an aircraft plummeting to the ground, despite the parachute. This got us thinking about the residual risks associated with this stunt and what boundaries the organisers put around the event. What was considered of significance and what factors were out of scope?
When we analyse risk, we formulate a boundary around the system we are dealing with. That boundary includes the system itself and parts of the ecosystem within which it sits. For civil aviation, the system is the aircraft and the ecosystem it sits within is civil airspace. This broader ecosystem is so complex that it is broken down into segments that carry their own regulatory boundaries. Flying in civil airspace requires compliance with the patchwork of standards that make up the overarching regulatory system. When the organisers were preparing for this stunt, did they consider neighbouring aircraft within the boundary of their system? Was damage to the environment considered when measuring the risk of an aircraft plummeting to the ground? Was reputational damage considered within the scope of their formulated boundary?
Defining boundaries turns out to be a core skill of analysis across different disciplines. These ‘boundary making’ exercises have real impacts but they are often overlooked or taken for granted, until something happens that challenges the presumed boundaries. Experts in systems thinking call the reflection on the boundaries ‘boundary critique’ [4] [5]. This is about digging a bit deeper and making more explicit the underlying assumptions around what stakeholders, issues or impacts are (or ought to be) included, excluded or marginalised.
Regulatory policy-makers invoke the economic concept of ‘externalities’ for thinking about residual risks and to point to market failures which can justify government intervention. Pollution (e.g, carbon emissions from cars, carcinogens from cigarette smoke or loss of sleep from noisy neighbours) and many things we call ‘accidents’ are often said to be ‘negative externalities’. They are ‘external’ or residual in the sense that the people engaged in the harm-creating activities have factored into their individual decisions - or internalised - some but not all the risks, costs and benefits to the world. But how do you draw the boundaries of who/what to include or exclude from the risk analysis?
Traditional risk analysis helps to create boundaries around a system to better understand what risks need to be captured. But as the applications and use of technology continue to get more creative, defining these boundaries will become more challenging, especially when we start thinking about all the residual risks that can come with ‘out of the box’ ideas like parachuting into an aircraft.
Applying this idea of boundary critique, risk management, negative externalities and the recent Redbull Stunt, we might ask: who or what is marginalised in the decision of RedBull to go ahead with the stunt? How much of the risks of harm to these stakeholders or things are internalised or externalised in the decision of the stunt proponents? What exactly about the FAA’s ‘boundaries’ of what is acceptable or unacceptable risk did RedBull not agree with? Who should draw these boundaries and what values are they bringing to this boundary making exercise?
References:
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/us/red-bull-plane-swap-crash-arizona.html ;
[2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/stunt-flying
[4] Ulrich W. (1996). Critical Systems Thinking for Citizens: A Research Proposal. Centre for
Systems Studies Research Memorandum #10. Centre for Systems Studies, Hull.
[5] Midgley, Gerald. “Systemic Intervention.” In The Sage Handbook of Action Research, 3rd ed., 157–66, 2015. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309153397_Systemic_Intervention.
