Essay on The Significance of Human Error in Aviation

The airline industry is one of the largest global industries in the world. Airline companies in the airline industry have gone through challenging obstacles in the past decade. Many changes have occurred within the industry and increased regulations have driven up cost for the industry. The attacks on 9/11 left the industry in shock when planes were used in terrorist attacks in the United States. These attacks changed the mentality of the industry and shifted the focus towards safety. Safety was also a major concern in the industry with the breakout of SARS in 2003 and the H1N1 flu in 2009. The airlines had to ensure that public health and safety of the travelers were

There are many aircraft accident factors in which investigators need to pursue in order to come to a good conclusion on what the cause or causes of an aircraft accident were. A portion of what the investigator looks into is the human factors surrounding the accident. This highly diverse and expansive area needs to be systematically looked into to figure out if any human factors were causation of an aircraft accident. One model that investigators utilize in order to sift through the human factors that may be attributable to an accident is the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) Model. This Model breaks down human factors into four different sections, organizational influences, unsafe supervision, preconditions for unsafe acts, and unsafe acts of operators. Throughout this case study, the accident of American Airlines flight 1420 will be dissected utilizing the HFACS Model to uncover human factors issues with the aircraft operator organization, aircraft flight crew, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

“Human error is responsible for the majority of aviation disasters. ... Such factors can include pilot fatigue from not getting enough sleep, distractions within or outside the cockpit, and simple design choices for the aircraft or spacecraft that make human mistakes more likely.” (Discovery) Many of the human errors in aviation today are caused by common occurrences in the human interaction part of flight, and that if eliminated, will reduce the chance of airplane accidents. In aviation, the underlying cause of machinery and human error is caused by either how well it can be built or the amount of training a pilot can go through. In an event of an accident, a whole list of certain checkpoints are reviewed and looked over. The foremost system reviewed is the human inputs, these are the most important yet uncontrollable parts of any incident. The video Why Planes Crash identifies the need to question not only the pilots actions, but anything that could’ve influenced those actions.(pg.375)

The day of 9/11 sparked the attention of the aviation industry, citing that it will never be the same again. Different sectors

Everyday millions of people fly on airplanes. It is an easy and fast way of traveling for work, vacations or to see family members. Statically air travel is safer than traveling by car, airplanes have higher fatality accidents. The reasons airplanes crash vary and can happen during takeoff, landing or during flight. “August 1985 witnessed more passenger and crew deaths on commercial airlines than any other month.” [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33931693.]

On June 1st, 1999 American Airlines flight 1420 experienced a tragic accident that claimed many lives and made an impact on aviation worldwide. The event and it subsequent investigation shed

Another factor which can explain the accident of 1988 is the influence of disrupted habitual tasks (Dismukes, 2012). One of the main steps in preparing an aircraft for flight is to make sure the wing flaps are in the take-off position; this is then checked off with a checklist and cross-checked again by both of the pilots (Dismukes, 2012). However, if something were to disrupt this sequence, the individuals may have to make changes to their routine, which by now would become a habit to them, which may mean they have to take certain steps in a different order. There have been situations where some pilots have forgotten that they haven’t completed the checklist yet, Dismukes (2012) suggested that it is likely that when an action is performed out of its typical sequence, it removes all relevant cues, like environmental cues, which aid the retrieval of that action. For example, if the pilots frequently reset the wing flaps near the start of the runway, if they have to change their sequence and do it at the end of the runway the usual visual cues are no longer available to them. We can conclude from this that when individuals are performing the sequential steps of specific procedures in their workplace, when their sequence is

Summary: On July 6, 2013 a Asiana flight 214 crash at the San Francisco airport. In the plane, it was carrying more that 300 hundred people and out of the 300 plus, only three people were killed in the incident and 200 people were injured (The Guardian, 2014). Within the past five years this event would make it first fatal passenger airline incident in the US. In addition, the crash was concluded as a pilot error due to crew member fail to maintain equipment system and identifying hazard.

Flight 1420 of American Airlines claimed the lives of 11 passengers on June 1, 1999. From the NTSB report one can conclude that there were several human factors that contributed to the accident of American Airlines flight 1420. Examples include unsafe acts by the pilots, violations that represent a willful disregard for the rules and regulations that govern safe flight as well as fatigue and substandard practices of operators which in this case include communication and coordination between the pilots and the air traffic controller. This paper will talk about these

“Aviation, both as an industry and as a sport, is a leader in safety through prevention. Aircraft pre-flight, 100 hour and

Ever thought of what happens behind the closed doors of a cockpit; usually people tend to be stressed out before and at the airport, trying to finalize last minute things of getting the luggage ready and being at the airport on time to embark on the journey of their dream that is coming

Prior to 1959, faulty equipment was the probable cause for many airplane accidents, but with the advent of jet engines, faulty equipment became less of a threat, while human factors gained prominence in accident investigations (Kanki, Helmreich & Anca, 2010). From 1959 to 1989, pilot error was the cause of 70% of accident resulting in the loss of hull worldwide (Kanki, Helmreich & Anca, 2010). Due to these alarming statistics, in 1979 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) implemented a workshop called “Resource Management on the Flightdeck” that led to what is now known as Crew Resource Management (CRM) or also known as Cockpit Resource Management (Rodrigues & Cusick, 2012). CRM is a concept that has been attributed

Traveling in air is a dangerous task that’s why aircraft engineers have been researching ways to improve security in airlines. Technological advances have resulted in automated cockpit procedures to make up for the human errors that usually occur (2000). Sixty eight percent of crashes are attributed to human error. This may include error during aircraft design, manufacturing, maintenance, or installation. Security breaches that result in terrorist activities can also be attributed to human error. This is the reason why technological innovations in safety are important in the airlines industry. Other technological factors include Customer Relation Management in the Internet.

Approach-and-landing accidents (ALAs) have been a persistent aviation safety concern. As early as the Wright brothers’ pioneering efforts of manned flight, controlled landing without crashing was a target end state of successful flight (Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company, n.d.). More than a century later, perturbations to the approach and landing phases of flight prevail. In an earlier study by the FSF ALAR Task Force, the average worldwide fatal ALA rate from 1980 through 1996 was 16.8 per year (FSF, 1999). Between 2007 and 2016, approximately 56% of all fatal accidents in worldwide commercial operations occurred during the approach and landing phases of flight (Boeing, 2017). Although substantially less than the fatal ALA rate of 23 per year predicted a decade earlier (FSF, 1999), this is an average fatal ALA rate of 3.5 per year. However, these numbers do not account for the nonfatal ALA accidents and incidents resulting in aircraft damage and other adverse outcomes. While the average fatal ALA rate has been significantly reduced, the ALA risk has not. Although only as many as 4 percent of all approaches occur in conditions jeopardizing aviation safety, nearly 97 percent of those at-risk approaches are voluntarily continued to landing (FSF, 2017). According to these numbers, only 3 percent of at-risk approaches in commercial aviation are countered by adherence to the policies and procedures intended to mitigate them. While ALAs occur at a

If we can find the answers to these questions, then I believe it is possible to limit and slow down the number of human errors in aviation, thusly slowing the number of accidents and lives lost due to human performance.