I don't know, turkeys and complacency

"I don't know", that's the answer I have given since the Malaysian 777 disappeared and people asked me what happened.
"I don't know", is what aviation experts should have answered as well when media asked them.
"I don't know", is what media should have stated daily instead of hypothesising and spreading rumours.

But they don't. No, apparently we live in a society that expects answers right now. No time to wait, we need to know immediately and preferably with all gross details attached and at least some self made youtube movies posted on the internet. That's the least we can expect. So if an airplane goes missing, media and society don't seem to grasp the concept that it may take years before answers are clear on what happened. If an airplane crashes at an airport it still takes years, and rescue workers and accident investigators are on site within minutes. When the SA-227 Metro crashed at Cork airport in February 2011 killing 6 people, it took almost 3 years before the final accident report was published (January 2014) identifying what happened, why it happened and the lessons to learn. Why does it take so long? Because aviation is complex, distilling what happened exactly is very complex and there is no room for error.

What worries me as well is that since the Malaysian crash we have seen in every newspaper and media report wonderful graphics (like the one below) showing how safe flying is. And it is, no doubt about it. But I don't like these graphs. They risk turning us, aviation professionals, decision makers and authorities into turkeys.

I don't make sense? Let me explain with the example that Taleb (yes yes I know) thought me: every day the risk management department and the economic department of the turkey sees the human coming into its pad with food. So every day the turkey learns from his risk management and economic assessment that the human brings food which makes the turkey happy. As days go by, the confidence of the turkey in the human grows and grows. And then after hundreds of days where the signal has been confirmed over and over again, the human walks into the turkey's pad with an ax. It's the day before Christmas (or Thanksgiving for the American turkey).

When I see graphs like the one below saying aviation has never been safer, I don't want to be a turkey. Yes it is safer than ever. But that should not make us complacent. Complacency is the biggest enemy for aviation safety.