Essay on Causes and Factors Involving Aircraft Accidents

One of the most controversial and important air crash linked to human error of the modern world happened on the night of February 12, 2009. Colgan air flight 3407, operated by Continental Connection, was on final approach to runway 23 at Buffalo-Niagara International Airport as it disappeared from radar. The aircraft was a Bombardier Dash 8, a popular twin engine medium range turboprop Airliner used by many regional carriers. The aircraft entered an uncontrollable stall crashing into to a neighborhood 5 miles northeast of the airport killing all everyone on souls on board. The Captain, Marvin Resnlow and first officer Rebecca Lynne were behind the controls the night of the accident. The NTSB report determined error by both pilots cause the aircraft to crash. Thus, pilot fatigues, improper recovery form a stall were contributing factors. The victim’s family members pushed for congress to overhaul airline regulations. The NTBS investigation delivery multiple findings that eventually led to a modernization of airline operations and pilot training.

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

The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the failure

On Saturday, August twenty-second, a stunt plane at an air show in England crashed and killed seven people. It was said that the pilot of the stunt plane was attempting to do a loop, but lost control and crashed onto a highway. The seven people that were killed in this accident were people just driving on highway and were caught in the accident. The plane model that crashed was called a “Hawker Hunter”, and it was a plane model from the Cold War. Along with the seven people that were killed in the accident, there are around fourteen people that were injured.

Investigators blamed the British Airways Birmingham Airport Shift Maintenance Manager for installing the incorrect bolts during the windscreen replacement and for failing to follow official British Airways policies. They also found fault with British Airways' policies, which should have required testing or verification by another person for this critical task. Finally, investigators blamed the local Birmingham Airport management for not directly monitoring the

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.

One of the most deadly plane crashes was when two planes ran into each other on the ground, killing 583 people. One of the deadliest plane crashes in the air was Trans World Airlines (TWA) flight 800. In the report they say that mechanical failure is at fault. Other people say that it was a missile strike at fault. The mystery behind the crash of TWA flight 800 can be summed up in two groups, missile hit or mechanical failure.

THE CRASH OF FLIGHT 800: THE POSSIBILITIES;Tips, Leads and Theories Are Flooding In." New York Times, 21 July 1996. Student Resources in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A150491566/SUIC?u=edmo59604&xid=185324d8. Accessed 29 Jan 2018. MCDOWELL-SMITH, ALLISON. "

A high level of interconnectedness between system components, reliance on indirect information sources, an unpredictable environment, or incomprehensibility of a system to its operators indicates complexity within a system (Perrow, 1999). Since systems are designed, run and built by humans, they cannot be perfect. Every part of the system is subject to failure; the design can be faulty, as can the equipment, the procedures, the operators, the supplies, and the environment. Since nothing is perfect, humans build in safeguards, such as redundancies, buffers, and alarms that tell operators to take corrective action. But occasionally two or more failures can interact in ways that could not be anticipated. These unexpected interactions of failures can defeat the safeguards, and if the system is also “tightly coupled” thus allowing failures to cascade, it can bring down a part or all of system. The vulnerability to unexpected interactions that defeat safety systems is an inherent part of highly complex systems; they cannot avoid this (Perrow, 1984).

As with most motor vehicle crashes, the cause is often rooted in one of two things: driver error or vehicle factors.

Airplanes are considered the safest way to travel with the odds of crashing being one in every 1.2 million flights. Flight is a movie based off of the Alaskan Airlines Flight 261 incident that occurred on January 21st, 2000 on route from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to Seattle, Washington which crashed into the Pacific Ocean killing two pilots, three cabin crewmembers and eighty-three passengers. (Goodman & Priscilla Pg. 1) However, in Flight SouthJet Flight 227 on route from Orlando, Florida to Atlanta, Georgia has a different outcome with only six deaths out of 102 persons two of which were cabin crewmembers and four passengers. According to the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB)

Flight 1420 was a disaster that taught the aviation community several important lessons. All the Seven Major Elements of Aviation safety can be seen as contributing factors but the greatest factor was human error and the impact of pilot fatigue. With proper preventative measures, the pilots probably would have had the time to arm the MD-82’s spoiler system and the flight would have touched down safely.

First and foremost, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 90% of all traffic accidents can be blamed on human error. Next, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, nearly 80%

In summary, it cannot be said that exact cause of most severe traffic accidents are known with certainty but it is believed that speeding and drinking, jointly or separately, play some role in the events that lead up to those accidents. Also to blame, in many instances, are the design of the highway, the condition of the weather, the maintenance of the vehicle, the time of the day (many severe accidents occur at dusk, with poor lighting and tired drivers), and the presence of radar detectors. A study by the Ohio State Police found that radar detectors were present in at least one of the vehicles involved in 69% of all severe traffic accidents on the highways of that state in 2005. Studies in other states have confirmed that finding, with some estimates of the relationship running as high as 75%.

There are several events that contributed to this incidents occurring. Some of them are related in the form of chain events for instance the second event occur because of the effect from the first event and the third event occur because of the effect from second event and so on until the incident occur. By using SHELL Model, base on the Aircraft Accident Report 3/96 which was provided and presented by Air Accidents Investigation Branch, Department of Transport, under the report title of “Report on the Incident to Boeing 737-400, G-OBMM near Davontry on 23 February 1995, the analysis of the contribution events to the incident can be reveal and the appropriate recommendations from competence authority was been made to ensure the same incident will not occur in the future.