Accidents commercial aviation

Accidents are very rare relative to the number of near accidents and human errors. Fortunate as it may seem, this poses a real problem for complex systems with a high catastrophy potential (nuclear power plants, chemical plants, commercial aviation) few accidents means few cases to analyse and hardly any feedback to learn from. This leads to the undesirable situation of ad-hoc corrective measures after each single accident, because the database is far too small to generate statistically sensible preventi ve measures. 

With the introduction of the Fly-By-Wire system in commercial aviation in the late 1980s, automation surprise has been considered as one of the major contributing factors in aircraft incidents and accidents. In the wake of Air France s Airbus A330 crash in 2009 (where temporary blockage of the pitot tubes by icing started it off and the... 

Wiegmann, D.A. Shappell, S.A. 2001. Applying the human factor analysis and classification system to the analysis of commercial aviation accident data. Paper presented at the 11th International Symposium on Aviation Psychology. 

Wiegmann, D. A. and Shappell, S.A. (2001). A human error analysis of commercial aviation accidents using the human factors analysis and classification system (HFACS) (Rep. No. DOT/FAA/AM-01/3). Washington, DC Office of Aviation Medicine. 

What defines how safe we are Is it aceidents, ineidents, and negative events Lets talk about accidents. The commercial aviation system has the lowest accident rate of any transportation system in terms of miles travelled. That s the good news. However, because there are so few aecidents, they earmot be used for statistical analysis. There are more incidents than accidents, which make incidents a better somce of data, and there are more negative events than incidents. Close calls, near misses, and complaints can all be used as a data somce if they are reported and recorded. However, we still lack knowledge of what really occurs in normal operations. 

Wiegmann, D. and Shappell, S. (2001), Human Error Analysis of Commercial Aviation Accidents Application of the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) Aviation Space and Environmental Medicine, 72, 1006-1016. 

The safe actions and satisfactory performance of personnel are essential aspects of maintaining safety across a wide range of high-risk industries. Accepted models of accident trajectory typically include both active failures of personnel and systems, as well as latent conditions which may lie dormant in an organization s operational system for considerable time (Reason, 1990). Closely aligned to the concept of active failmes and latent conditions are the terms error and threat respectively, coneepts which have recently been the focus of considerable research in the commercial aviation setting. 

Shappell, S.A., Detwiler, C., Holcomb, K., Hackworth, C., Boquet, A. Wiegmann, D.A. 2007 Human Error and Commercial Aviation Accidents An Analysis Using The Human Factors Analysis And Classification System. Human Factors, 49, 227-242. 

The three types of errors enumerated above match with those defined in the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS), which is a general human error framework for classifying aviation accidents. It has been developed and used within the U.S. military, applied to commercial aviation accident records and proved to be a valuable tool in the civil aviation area. But it makes also sense to apply the classification scheme in other areas, like in COOPERS. 

Barlay, Stephen. The Search for Air Safety An International Documentary Report on the Investigation of Commercial Aviation Accidents. New York William Morrow Company, 1970. 

Hall, S., Railway Accidents, Ian Allan Publishing, Shepperton, UJC, 1997. Wells, A. T., and Rodgrigues, C. C., Commercial Aviation Safety, McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 2004. 

Organizational Factors Related to Pilot Error in Commercial Aviation Accidents... 

One of these studies analyzed the National Transportation Safety Board s (NTSB s) commercial aviation accident data for the period 1990-2000 [12]. The study reported that 60 of the 1,322 accidents that occurred during this period were attributable, directly or indirectly, to pilot error due to 70 organizational... 

Discus organizational factors in commercial aviation-related accidents with respect to pilot error. 

As can be seen from Fig. 13.1, the accident rate has been essentially constant for at least 20 years. However, if the accident rate remains constant, and airline traffic grows at the projected rate, then the number of hull loss accidents worldwide would reach almost one per week by the year 2015. Figure 13.2 neatly illustrates this probable future trend in commercial aviation accidents. 

In 1977, two fully loaded Boeing 747 commercial aircraft crashed into each other on a foggy runway in the Canary Islands. This accident was then the worst in aviation history and took 583 lives. An inquiry concluded most of the deaths in the Canary Islands accident resulted from the aviation fuel fire that lasted for more than 10 hours. G. Daniel Brewer, who was the hydrogen program manager for Lockheed, stated that if both aircraft had been using liquid hydrogen as fuel instead of kerosene, hun-... 

During World War II, isopropyl benzene, more commonly and commercially known as cumene, was manufactured in large volumes for use in aviation gasoline. The combination of a benzene ring and an iso-paraffin structure made for a very high octane number at a relatively cheap cost. After the war, the primary interest in cumene was to manufacture cumene hydroperoxide. This compound was used in small amounts as a catalyst in an early process of polymerizing butadiene with styrene to make synthetic rubber. Only by accident did someone discover that mild treating of cumene hydroperoxide with phosphoric acid resulted in the formation of... 

Boeing Commercial Aircraft Group (BCAG) (1993), Crew Factor Accidents Regional Perspective, in Proceedings of the 22nd Technical Conference of the International Air Transport Association (lATA) on Human Factors in Aviation (Montreal, October 4-8), lATA, Montreal, pp. 45-61. 

Most people are happy to travel by air. In fact in the Western World, scheduled commercial air travel is one of the safest means of transport—safer than trains and certainly safer than motor vehicles. This is not to say that car or aviation accidents are acceptable. We tolerate the risks because of the benefits conferred. 

In the early days of aviation, the airplane was considered a novelty that served no useful purpose. As the number of aircraft and the performance increased, accidents became more frequent. By 1925 the U.S Postal Service was attempting to establish commercial passenger service by contracting with private companies to fly mail. As this service expanded, the need for some type of air traffic control became apparent. 

Over the years, there have been many aviation accidents due to mechanical failures and mechanical-related pilot errors (a mechanical-related pilot error is the one in which pilot error was the actual cause but brought about by some kind of mechanical failure). A worldwide study of 1,300 fatal accidents involving commercial aircraft (i.e., excluding aircraft with 10 or fewer people on board and helicopters), during the period 1950-2008, revealed 134 accidents due to mechanical failure and 25 accidents due to mechanical-related pilot error [4]. It is to be noted that these two types of accidents are out of those accidents whose cause was identifiable. The decade breakdowns of these two types of accidents are presented in Table 5.1 [4]. 

Boeing, Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents Worldwide Operations 1959 - 2010. Aviation Safety, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A (June 2011)... 

The National Civil Aviation Review Commission concluded in 1997 that it is evident that the frequency of fatal accidents cannot increase in line with the predicted growth in commercial air traffic. 

---