American Airlines Flight 1420 Accident Using The SHELL Model

Crashes are rare, and most of the time are consequences of many unrelated factors. Many believe that airplane crashes are the cause of bad piloting or harsh weather; but other factors are overlooked. Suren Ratwatte have been studying airplane

Accident investigation and analysis will be assessed in the project as it relates to safety in order to highlight the strategies applied by the airlines in determining the causes of incidents and preventing them in the future.

The terrorist attacks on September 11 2001 will have a permanent affect on the global culture. Nearly every decision, process, design in the aviation community will be affected from these attacks. The masterminds behind these attaches could not have envisioned how much the world would change from these acts.

On 1st of February, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia exploded when it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere after finished a 16 days mission in space. All seven astronauts were dead because of this incident. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had stopped the space shuttle program for more than two years to investigate this tragedy. In the 16 days period, the astronauts did approximately 80 experiments on different categories, for example, life science and material science [1]. An investigation later has found out that the disaster was caused by a problem on the day that took off on 16th of January.

In February of 2009, Colgan Air flight 3407 crashed while on approach killing forty-nine people on board as well as one on the ground according to the official National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Accident Report (2010). In February of 2008, go! flight 1002 ignored several radio calls after departure and eventually flew past its destination and continued over open water according to the NTSB’s Report (2009). In April of 2007, Pinnacle Airlines flight 4712 overran the runway after landing at its destination airport. According to the NTSB’s official Accident Report (2008), there were no injuries. The incidents and accidents listed above all have one common factor: fatigue. Fatigue was shown to have played some role in Colgan 3407, go! 1002, and Pinnacle 4712.

On 1st of February, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia exploded when it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere after finished a 16 days mission in space. All seven astronauts were dead because of this incident. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had stopped the space shuttle program for more than two years to investigate this tragedy. In the 16 days period, the astronauts did approximately 80 experiments on different categories, for example, life science and material science [1]. An investigation later has found out that the disaster was caused by a problem on the day that took off on 16th of January.

The aviation community has to constantly keep innovating to help ease congestion in the air space, and keep passengers safe. The implementation of the airport modernization act has continued to aid the aviation industry, and as a result we have seen improvement in technology, and airport operations. Human error has continue to be an issue in the aviation industry, as noted by the author in How Traffic Control Keeps you Safe, but airlines still has some of the best safety records amongst the modes of transportation. The article gave great example of the current issues in the aviation industry, and how they are using technology to their advantage to help lesson these risk. There is always going to be accidents in the aviation industry, but taking right steps to make sure that numbers of mistakes are slim to none is something that will help aid to the growth of the

NASA had made a bad decision. The accident investigation report infers that the engineers' doubts and concerns not being effectively communicated to NASA's management. The wrong reporting tool was used to convey technical data.

This week’s assignment brought back a lot of memories for me. It made me think back to what I was doing and how this tragedy impacted not only me, but also the United States as a whole. Going through this simulation gave me a little more insight into what actually happened and how this tragedy could have possibly been avoided had NASA’s management team taken heed to the engineers and others who advised them to bring in someone to do a complete inspection of the shuttle. During this simulation, I viewed this tragedy through the eyes of one of the many engineers that were employed at NASA during this tragic time. I feel that this tragedy was the result of a combination of leadership and process failures.

The National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) investigation concluded that the probable cause of the crash was pilot error, and the pilot’s failure to properly monitor the flight instruments to detect their decent before impacting the ground (Elder & Elder, 1977). Another significant crash was United Airlines Flight 173 on December 28, 1978, nearly six years to the day since the Flight 401 incident. Another coincidence is that Flight 173 also experienced a landing gear issue like Flight 401. The captain of the United Airlines flight attempted to troubleshoot the landing gear issue over the course of an hour (Noland). During this time, the flight engineer made feeble attempts at making the captain, who has been described as arrogant, aware of the low fuel state of the aircraft (Noland). The result was the United Airlines flight crashed in a wooded area killing 10 people after running out of fuel. The NTSB concluded that whether the flight engineer was unaware of the graveness of the situation or just didn’t assert himself enough to let the captain know about the fuel quantity problem, something needed to be done in regards of flight crew’s interaction and management of their resources. The NTSB made a recommendation which led to implementing a new program set up by a NASA workshop called Crew

The science of human factors in aviation has a come along way since the days of the Wright brothers in 1913 but it did not actually start with them. According to Dr. Bill Johnson, Chief Scientist at the Federal Aviation Administration, human factors “dates back to the 1600s when Leonardo da Vinci drew the Vitruvian Man, with all the anthropometric measures, [when] he was trying to decide if a human was strong enough to propel an aircraft” (FAA, 2012). Long after the work of da Vinci, human factors has brought advancements to aircraft design while creating a greater understanding of the human role in mishaps.

In the early hours of the morning on Tuesday, August 16th 2005, West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 was a West Caribbean Airways charter flight which crashed in a mountainous region of northwest Venezuela. With eight crew members and 152 passengers the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 departed Tocumen International Airport (PTY) in Panama City, Panama and headed to Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport (FDF) in Fort-de-France, Martinique, France. After initially climbing to FL310, and subsequently to FL330 to level off, the Captain of the aircraft noticed the engines sounded abnormal. Reacting to sounds of the engines, the Captain began to take corrective actions to correct the problem, by starting a rapid descent as a precaution. The time from the initial radio call from the first officer declaring engine problems to the subsequent crash took only 9:00 minutes. This research paper will delve into the chain of mistakes that were made in order for this terrible accident to have occured.

Loss of Control In Flight (LOC-I) has consistently been a predominant cause of aviation accidents. Loss of Control Accidents are highly complex and typically involve the combination of multiple contributing factors (Belcastro and Jacobson, 2010). Over the last eight years, loss of control accidents have resulted in

New technologies and stringent regulations have contributed significantly in the reduction of Commercial Aviation (Part 121) accidents due to loss of control in flight. Several studies have been performed

Yet, due to the advanced equipment inside AVs, it will be difficult to differentiate technological malfunctions from AV technology with those of driver negligence at the outset of mass AV use. In the foreseeable future when there will likely be no human driver this will not be an issue. Instead, the difficult part will be determining which manufacturer out of the many involved in the creation of the AV is at fault. Present day procedures for identifying who is at fault may not be satisfactory when the accident involves an AV.