The rugby flyover and the normalisation of deviance

Share current article via Email Share current article via Facebook Share current article via Twitter Share current article via LinkedIn Story audio is generated using AI This past weekend I too watched the Airlink planes do the now (in)famous flyover to kick off the second Test against the All Blacks. Impressive as it was, I, like many others, also couldn't help the 'eish, was that a little too close for comfort?' response. The planes weren't just flying low; they were flying very close together as they thundered over the stadium. South Africa's Civil Aviation Regulation 91.06.32 stipulates that aircraft cannot fly over congested areas or open-air crowds below 305m (1,000ft) above the highest obstacle within a 610m (2,000ft) radius. To do so, the pilot must have written approval from the director of the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA). Cape Town's reported 12m–14m roof clearance was nowhere close to the 305m baseline minimum and therefore required approval for the action. While the airline states that everything was in order for this flyover, surely the obvious point is being missed. These minimum height requirements exist for a sound reason: it is potentially dangerous to fly below them. It is also important to note that the height of the flyover at the first Test was unofficially estimated at roughly 64-91m. The boundaries are being pushed week on week. Where will it end? The international and national outcry that has unfolded has been interesting to watch — from South Africans fiercely defending the flyover action and bravado of the pilots to the harsh criticism from many aviation experts the world over. Airlink has subsequently offered its black-box data for independent review and verification. Where the risk is high and lives are on the line if anything goes wrong, more needs to go into the decision-making process, not less. But again, isn't that missing the point? Surely the whole incident must at least give us pause to ask what motivated such an extreme flyover. Was it necessary and prudent, with so many people under those planes? I have absolutely no doubt that the pilots knew exactly what they were doing. And yes, at the end of it all, no-one was harmed. But that kind of thinking is in itself very dangerous in high-risk environments. It gives rise to a complacency that all is fine and will keep being fine, right up until it isn't. Where the risk is high and lives are on the line if anything goes wrong, more needs to go into the decision-making process, not less. I imagine a conversation happened somewhere along the lines of: 'We need a spectacular show of support for the boys, especially since they are on the back foot. Let's up the game from last week's flyover at Ellis Park.' That pull to impress, to outdo ourselves, to push it just a little further in the moment, is a seductive kind of pressure. It's the same pull behind the decision to get the Titanic to its destination a day early, to show the world a bold new innovation like the Titan submersible, or to get countless Boeing aircraft to clients faster than the competition, whatever the cost. As a psychologist working in safety leadership, I spend a lot of time engaging leaders in high-risk environments about how their engagement and decision-making shape the safety culture around them. It's in these exact moments, when key calls are being made, that we most need to slow down and properly weigh the costs against the benefits of a particular action. The gradual process through which unacceptable standards of practice become acceptable is known as the 'normalisation of deviance', a concept first introduced by the sociologist Diane Vaughan in 1996 and explored further by Sidney Dekker in his 2011 book Drift into Failure. Dekker argues that most serious accidents in complex systems (aviation, health care, space missions and industrial plants) don't happen because one person suddenly makes a catastrophic error or breaks a rule. Instead, they emerge gradually as organisations optimise for efficiency and production, and small adaptations quietly accumulate over time. Eventually, the system has drifted a long way from where it started, without anyone noticing that it has moved into serious risk. The normalisation of deviance is the natural human tendency, often under pressure (schedule pressure, resource pressure, personal pressure), for individuals or teams to rationalise taking a risk to get the job done. I see it often in high-risk environments, where teams convince themselves that they need to take a safety shortcut just to get things done in time. Once a risk is taken once and there are no immediate consequences (the planes flew low over the stadium safely and nothing happened), the likelihood of that same action being taken again increases. The absence of something bad happening creates the impression that the action is safe. It's false feedback. As the behaviour repeats without consequence, it can quietly become the norm, without anyone noticing they've crossed a line into danger. When egos get in the way, decisions like these are never made in isolation; personalities and egos inevitably come into play We normalise risk in South Africa all the time. From the moment we wake up, South Africans are normalising risk just to get through the day: jumping into an overcrowded taxi that ignores the rules of the road, drinking and driving (which contributes to roughly 50% of all fatal road deaths), speeding while kindly flashing other drivers about an upcoming roadblock, living in unsafe communities and workplaces. In so many spaces, we no longer even see the risks we've accepted. We have normalised extreme deviance from even basic safety rules, and we carry on this way until something serious happens: the fatal multi-vehicle pile-up on the highway, the workplace fatality that devastates a family, shuts an organisation down, triggers an investigation and forces an overhaul of the whole system or, heaven forbid, two planes getting that split-second timing wrong as they cross a stadium. When egos get in the way, decisions like these are never made in isolation; personalities and egos inevitably come into play. I wonder whether anyone raised concerns about the risk of flying so low and, if so, whether those concerns were taken seriously or even heard at all. Both the recent Netflix documentaries Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing and Titan: The Ocean Gate Submersible Disaster illustrate how egotistical and self-serving leadership creates the conditions for the normalisation of deviance. In both cases people were silenced and sidelined for raising safety concerns. In the end, innocent people lost their lives. What can we do to prevent the normalisation of deviance? Whenever we have a high-risk decision to make, we must challenge what we think — every time. Despite the experience, knowledge or know-how that is in the room, treat each high-risk decision as though it's the first time you're making it. That mindful attention is what prevents complacency. Weighing the risks properly and seeking out diverse views is another key action. I wonder whether that flyover would have gone ahead exactly as it did if more diverse views had been heard in the decision-making room. There is no greater consequence than the loss of life, and where there's a safer way to do something, especially in high-risk environments, that should always come first.