I recently blogged using the airline industry as an example of the dependence of IT and within hours a colleague sent me a further example of the business dependence on IT. This time the error had the potential to be fatal. An Emirates Airbus A340-500 passenger jet suffered substantial damage after its tail clipped the runway during take-off from Melbourne Airport in Australia. It appears that the damage occurred due to a human error with the take off weight requiring manual pilot intervention to avert serious damage. A report I found on Travelmole.com mentioned that "the jet with 257 passengers and 18 crew aboard, heading for Dubai on a scheduled flight, had problems getting off the ground because wrong data had been fed into an onboard computer, according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau...It was reported that the that due a communication error the cockpit fed into the computer a weight for the aircraft that was 100 tonnes lighter than its actual weight of 362 tonnes....The plane subsequently landed at Melbourne with no reported injuries."

When I googled "Emirates in damage control after near miss" I received 10,600 hits.  A quick review of the incident identified that Emirates were forced to move rapidly into damage control to protect their reputation as one of the reports incorrectly claimed that the malfunction was due to the airline attempting to save money by reducing fuel used at take-off.  Safety for any airline is a key principle and the target of extensive focus and many checks and balances and questions in this space could quickly destroy the reputation. 

This reminded me of one of the positive aspects of governance when correctly implemented. The metrics collected allowed the airline to quickly defend the situation and rapidly prove the facts. 

The growing complexity of the value network that Service Managers have to leverage including the move to cloud, complex value chains and the combination of business and IT processes make it critical that service managers ensure the appropriate controls and governance metrics and measurements are in place... more on that in the near future.