Boeing accident

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-... 

Boeing. 1993. Accident Prevention Strategies Removing Links in the Accident Chain. Seattle Boeing Commercial Airplane Group. 

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. 

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) (1991), Aircraft Accident Report Avianca, the Airline of Columbia, Boeing 707-321B, HK 2016 Fuel Exhaustion, Cove Neck, New York, January 25, 1990, Report No. NTSB-AAR-91-04, NTSB, Washington, DC. 

X-AXG Boeing 747-258F El A104.10.92, Bijhnermeer. Accident report 92-11, Netherlands Aviation Safety Board, Amsterdam, 1992. 

Dekker, Sidney. Report on the Elight Crew Human Eactors Investigation Conducted for the Dutch Safety Board into the Accident of TKl 951, Boeing 737-800 near Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Eebruary 25, 2009. Lund University, Sweden 2009. 

Human errors continue to dominate as a contributing factor in aircraft accidents (see Annex A to this chapter). A Boeing study (2001) found that flight crew errors are listed as the primary cause in 66% of accidents and that despite the introduction of protective devices or systans, this percentage has remained relatively unchanged in recent years. An FAA study (2002) into Aeroplane Safety Assurance Processes concluded that the processes used to determine and vahdate human responses to failure and methods to include human responses in safety assessments need to be improved and that the industry challenge is to develop aeroplanes and procedures that are less likely to result in operator error and that are more tolerant to operator error when they do occur . 

In 2008 an Aeroflot-Nord pilot flying a Boeing 737-500 crashed on approach to Perm, Russia, because of disorientation. The official report stated the accident was at least partly caused by the fact that the Western and Russian artificial horizons, also known as Attitude Director Indicator, operate on a completely different psychology and that the captain had spent most of his flying Ufe using the Russian model. 

Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Accidents Worldwide Operation, June 2001. The Boeing Company, 1959-2000, p. 21. 

While the interface analysis techniques are used to assess the interface of a product or system in terms of usability, error, user-satisfaction and layont, the HMI encompasses displays, alarms and manual controls. Major aircraft mannfactnrers (such as Boeing and Airbus) often follow very different approaches to the very important aspect of HMI in their designs and crew interface during normal and emergency situations. Using accident case stndies, this Annex aims to elaborating on a few of these preferences and differences, with their advantages and limitations. 

Both flight 301 and 603 accidents involved Boeing 757, foreign crews, overwater operations at night, flight guidance system anomahes shortly after takeoff, and both proved fatal to aU passengers and crew members on board. 

The overall trend toward improving safety records (due to improvements in both equipment and training) may have been sufficiently large to compensate for some adverse impacts due to deregulation. For example, data from Boeing (1998) show that the rate of severe accidents due to all causes decreased sharply from 1959 to 1979, presumably due to a variety of technological and operational improvements. ... 

Boeing Commercial Aircraft Group (1998), Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents Worldwide operations, 1959-1997, Seattle, Wash. 

According to the same Boeing report, the hull loss accident rate is 1.59 accidents per million departures. This means that if you flew twice a day, it would be 2,178 years before you were involved in a hull loss accident, on average. The odds of being involved in a hull loss accident are considerably less than the odds of being struck by lightning (estimated at 1 280,000 by the US National Lightning Safety Institute). 

National Transportation Safety Board, In-Flight Breakup over the Atlantic Ocean, Trans World Airlines Fligfit Boeing 747-131, N93119, Near East Moriches, New York, July 17,19%. Aircraft Accident Report NTSB/AAR-00/03. Washington, DC. Notation 6788G, August 23,2000. Available online at www.ntsb.org. 

In the Boeing 737 accident report of Manchester (AAIB, 1988), there were 31 safety recommendations. That sounds impressive, but they will not have been much use if nothing happens as a result. There were all sorts of useful ideas, like carrying smoke hoods in airliners, and internal sprinklers in future aircraft but have many of them been implemented ... 

AAIB (1988), Report on the accident to Boeing 737-236 G-BGJL at Manchester Airport on 22 August 1985 (Aircraft accident report 8/88) , London HMSO. 

National Transportation Safety Board, (2002), Aircraft accident report Collision with Trees On Final Approach Federal Express Flight 1478 Boeing 727-232, N497FE Tallahassee. Florida. 

A safety-critical system is a system that can cause undesired loss or harm to human life, property, or the environment, whereas safety-critical software is software that can contribute to such loss or harm [1]. A software cannot directly cause loss or harm, but it may control some equipment that may cause accidents [2]. Therefore, many examples of safety systems which have failed due to software related faults the loss of Ariane 5 [4], Therac-25 [3], and more recently Boeing 777-200 [8] and the Toyota Prius. Many software related accidents and major losses are the result of incompleteness or other flaws in the software requirements, not coding errors [1]. Safety is a system problem therefore, to understand the safety aspects of software, it is necessary first to understand the general field of system safety. 

What follows is a brief description of three separate air crashes, which took place over 13 years, featuring two completely different designs of airliner (the Boeing 757 and the Airbus 330), and yet the accidents had some similar circumstances. All three accidents were thoroughly investigated and are well documented, and each has even been the subject of its own television documentary. 

Mishaps due to coffin comer have largely been confined to experimental aircraft nnder test conditions, althongh some civil aviation accidents did occur in early jet travel, some fatal. Notable incidents with successful recovery include a high-altitude stall of a Pan American Boeing 707 while cruising over the Atlantic at 35,000 feet in Febmary 1959. Happily, the pilot was able to recover control, but by that lime the aircraft was at 6000 feet. 

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