Research Paper on "Human Factor Leading to Aviation Incidents"
Research Paper 8 pages (2295 words) Sources: 8 Style: APA
[EXCERPT] . . . .
Human Factor in AviationWithin the last few decades, global commercial aircraft has suffered series of causalities leading to loss of life and significant damages to aircrafts. Globally, there are aircraft fatal causalities of ratio one to one million flights. Between 1990 and 2006, total of 1441 air taxi and commuter crashed where 26% (373) were fatal accidents leading to 1,063 deaths. Human errors have been identified as the major factors causing the aircraft mishaps in the commercial aviation industry. The most common errors include failure to coordinate air traffic control systems, high workload, and boredom. Human factors have been the major contributing factors causing commercial aircraft causalities globally. Within civilian aviation, human factors cause damage to aircraft with ratio of one to 5000 flights. Moreover, interface between ground and aircraft handling equipment causes 61% of aircraft incidents. (Balk et al., 2010). Lost of life and investments due to the aircraft mishaps necessitates this research. The study attempts to investigate the human factors causing the aircraft incidents and correlation between anomalies and type of aircrafts.
Research Objectives
Objective of this study is to evaluate the relationship between human factors and aircraft incidents. The study also provides analysis of factors leading to aircraft incidents. The study focuses on comparing human factors, aircraft types, anomalies types, phase of flight, and contributing factors. The study will also evaluate weather conditions, visibility, or light conditions to evaluate contributing factors to aircraft incidents.
Research Questions
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The research questions are:
What are the relationship between human factors and aircraft incidents?
What is the correlation between incidents and aircraft types?
Are there differences between Heavy aircraft, Regional, and Narrow-body in terms of types of incidents?
Are there correlating factors between aircraft type and anomalies?
What is the type of incidents of Airbus fly-by-wire aircraft vs. other aircraft?
Methodology
The study collects data from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) database and creates type of each anomaly based on the NASA's 14 taxonomies. The study also collects data from the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) database. The database contains a comprehensive data on human factors causing aircraft incidents. The FAA also contain database of different type of anomalies causing the aircraft incidents. The study collects data on different human factors that cause aircraft accidents such as:
Communication breakdown,
Confusion,
Distraction
Fatigue
Human-Machine Interface
Physiological and other situational awareness.
Time Pressure
Training and Qualification
Troubleshooting, and Workload.
Moreover, the study searches different secondary research to enhancing a greater understanding on the human factors causing the aircraft accidents. The search strategy is to use the appropriate keywords to search for the scholarly studies from the electronic database such as ScienceDirect, EBSCO, and government database. The keywords to search for the appropriate papers to complete the study include:
aircraft accidents
Communication breakdown human factors anomalies, and human error.
Literature Reviews
This section reviews scholarly, governmental and peer-reviewed reviewed literatures relevant to the study. The literatures are reviewed to discuses human related factors leading to the cause of accidents among commercial aircraft.
Human factors concept is a multidisciplinary field focusing on reducing human errors and optimizing human performances. Typically, human factors incorporate principle and methods of social and behavioral sciences, physiology and engineering to optimizing human performance. Human factors are variables that influence performance of team or crew, however, Balk and Bossenbroek, (2010) define human factors as human, organizational, environmental and job characteristics influencing work's behaviour in a manner than can affect health and safety. The definition shows that human factors can influence worker's behavior positively or negatively at work. Sarter, & Alexander (2000) argue that human error is the major contributing factor of all aviation incidents contributing between 70 and 80% of all aviation accidents.
Shappell, & Wiegmann (2000) explore the major factors causing the aircraft accidents. Typically, between 70 and 80% of aviation incidents are caused by human errors and some of the errors are skilled-based errors that include breakdown of visual scan, and poor technique in manoeuvring the aircraft. Violation is another human error where some aircrew violates the laid down rules and regulations. For example, aircraft incidents may occur due to violation of aviation rules and regulations. Some aircraft crew may fail to adhere to the brief or the radar altimeter appropriately. Some incidents may occur if the crew does not effectively prepare for the flight. Shappell, et al. (2000) argues that human errors have led to the increase in the aviation incidents in the last few decades despite the sophisticated technology and innovative systems integrated in designing and building the modern aircrafts.
Deitz and Thomas (1991) support this argument by pointing out that errors from personnel have been the major cause of aviation accidents. Typically, two thirds of aviation accidents are generally due to pilot errors, which include judgment errors, failure to concentrate, communication breakdown and possible physical and emotional breakdown of pilots. The significant contribution of pilots to the aircraft incidents makes pilots to be the major contributors to aircraft safety. Apart from identifying pilots as the major contributors of the aviation incidents, other crew on board contributes to major aircraft incidents. In 2003, pilot errors had been attributed to 131 accidents, however, errors from maintenance technicians, flight instructors, and airport personnel have been cited as the cause of 21% of the 131 accidents.
However, Tsang, and Vidulich, (2003) point out the alcohol is the leading contributor to accidents in commercial aviation. The authors argue the mode of alcohol consumption might have a great effect on coordination and judgment when reaching higher altitudes. Despite the argument of the authors about the use of alcohol, however, a decline in alcohol consumption in the last few decades is partly due to the improvement in aviation regulations.
Other general causes of air accidents include:
1. Piloting errors
2. Negligence of flight service
3. Faulty equipment
4. Cargo hold or cabin fire
5. Hijacking
6. Violations of FAA (Federal Aviation Regulations).
7. Structural or design problems
8. Sabotage
9. RF (Radio frequency) interference.
10. Error from air traffic controller.
11. Negligence from Third party carrier
12. Repair or maintenance negligence
13. Fueling error
14. Alcohol consumption by pilots
15. Bird strikes
16. Fuel starvation
17. Use of prescription drugs, and dangerous substances by pilots. (Tsang, and Vidulich, 2003).
Herrera & Vasigh, (2009) in their argument do not believe that human errors are the only contributing factors that cause aircraft accidents, the authors argue that aircraft's type and age of the aircraft have also been the factors leading to accidents within aviation industry. The authors point out the more an aircraft increases in age, the more the aircraft is susceptible to accident. Essentially, frequency of accidents occur with increase in the age of the aircraft and "there is a correlation between the number of accidents, their severity and aircraft manufacturers." (Herrera & Vasigh, 2009, p 121).
The table 1 reveals the number of accidents by manufacturers between 2000 and 2007. Data collected between 2000 and 2007 show that Boeing record largest number of accidents, followed by Airbus, McDonnell Douglas and others. The statistical data reveal that Airbus recorded the lowest number of accidents between 2000 and 2007.
Table 1: Aircraft Accidents Categorized by Manufacturer between 2000 and 2007
Aircraft Manufacturers
Number of Accidents
Boeing
Airbus
27
McDonnell Douglas
74
Other
Source: Herrera & Vasigh, (2009)
However, Boeing (2013) presents statistical data revealing the correlation between accident types and type of aircraft involved between 1959 and 2012. As being revealed in Table 2, the passenger aircraft has highest number of aircraft accidents between 1959 and 2012. Between 1959 and 2012, the United States and Canada record 557 commercial aircraft accidents.
Data Analysis
The study uses the quantitative technique for data analysis and provides correlations among variables. More importantly, the paper uses descriptive statistics to summary the data in a manageable form. Using the descriptive statistics, the study is able to summarize large volume of data and provide mean, mode, median and standard deviation of all the data. Moreover, the descriptive statistics assists in presenting data in a graphical form. The descriptive statistics table below reveals different human factors leading to commercial aircraft incidents which include:
Communication Breakdown
Confusion
Distraction
Fatigue
Human-Machine Interface
Physiological - Other
Situational Awareness
Time Pressure
Training/Qualification
Workload
Trouble shooting and Workload.
Descriptive Statistics Summary of Human factors Causing Commercial Aircraft Accidents
Communication Breakdown
Confusion
Distraction
Fatigue
Human-Machine Interface
Other/
Unknown
Physiological - Other
Situational Awareness
Time Pressure
Training/
Qualification
Trouble
shooting
Workload
Mean
80,04
70,56
52,08
12,130
47,52
0
10,60
112,91
38,73
0
45,34
38,69
Standard Error
19,58
17,13
12,71
3,305
10,52
0
3,02
26,65
8,43
0
9,40
8,84
Median
50
43
27
5
26
0
6
70
24
0
26
20
Mode
#N/A
3
#N/A
0
1
0
0
32
11
0
69
10
Standard Deviation
93,93
82,16
60,99
15,85
50,48
0
14,49
127,81
40,42
0
45,08
42,44
Sample Variance
8823,77
6751,52
3720,44
251,30
2548,44
0
210,06
16336,44
1634,56
0
2033,05
1801,22
Kurstosis
2,098
2,63
3,39
1,62
-0,04
0!
5,82
1,67
0,79
#DIV/0!
0,83
1,59
Skewness
1,56
1,63… READ MORE
Quoted Instructions for "Human Factor Leading to Aviation Incidents" Assignment:
This is a research paper about human factor and airplane incidents.
I pull out some data from NASA, here is the link http://akama.arc.nasa.gov/ASRSDBOnline/QueryWizard_Filter.aspx
I will need to write a research paper with abstract, literature review, analysis, and suggestion/conclusion.
Basically, I will upload some documents I have later. I really hope someone who is familiar with airplane take this order. If this works well I will probably need to add some pages.
here is a short proposal:
Abstract:
Our research has become focused on aviation safety, and specifically, human factors. Much of the impetus for this, is that human factors is a common contributing factor in aviation accidents, according to one of our sources, 70% to 80% of aviation accidents feature human factors as a contributing factor. The central focus of the report is using NASA*****s Aviation Safety Reporting System records. We have downloaded data from January 2011 to January 2013, where human factors have been identified.
It should be noted that according to our research we have identified that there are some shortcomings to the data because it is self reported, and there are also tendencies for over reporting of automatically detected items, however we do not think this will affect our analysis.
Our analysis will focus on comparing aircraft type, phase of flight, human factor types, anomaly types, and contributing factors. It is also possible we might look at weather, visibility, or light conditions, though we are wary of creating too much work for ourselves. We have begun to clean the data in order to begin cluster analysis with various combinations of these factors.
Questions:
The primary questions that we would like to ask, are:
What is the correlation between aircraft type and incidents?
Are there differences between Regional, Narrow-body, and Heavy aircraft in terms of types of incidents (for example, might poor weather conditions, or visibility, or fatigue be more common in smaller, regional airliners)?
Are there any correlating factors between types of anomalies and aircraft type? We want to look especially at *****Loss of Control***** incidents, as they are
Another interesting question might be to analyze incidents in Airbus fly-by-wire aircraft versus other aircraft, due to the sophisticated flight control laws, but also the lack of sensory feedback in the controls, it would be interesting to see if there is any difference compared to other aircraft types.
We have cleaned the data by creating categorical types for each anomaly type according to NASA*****s 14 taxonomies. Furthermore, we have cleaned the data to by aircraft type.
Our methodology would be to create cluster an*****s to determine correlations, and further to see if there are any distinguishable patterns.
Literature Review:
Our literature review has already found that there have been several papers analyzing this data in the past; as of note was a paper from the early 1990s which looked at Flight Management Systems in relation to incidents, and another one from 2000 which compared aircraft with glass cockpits to those with traditional flight controls. We also have a program briefing PowerPoint from NASA, detailing the ASRS system.
1. Robert S. Dodd, Donald Eldredge, and Susan J. Mangold, A Review and Discussion of Flight Management System Incidents Reported to the Aviation Safety Reporting System, February 1992.
2. Nadine B. Sarter, *****Error Types and Related Error Detection Mechanisms in the Aviation Domain: An Analysis Of...,***** International Journal of Aviation Psychology 10, no. 2 (April 2000): 189.
3. *****ASRS Program Briefing,***** August 2013, http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/docs/ASRS_ProgramBriefing2012.pdf.
4. ASRS Database Statistics (1994). Retrieved February 24, 2014, from http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/publications/directline/dl8_stat.htm
5. ASRS Database Online - Query Filter. Retrieved February 24, 2014, from http://akama.arc.nasa.gov/ASRSDBOnline/QueryWizard_Filter.aspx
*****
How to Reference "Human Factor Leading to Aviation Incidents" Research Paper in a Bibliography
“Human Factor Leading to Aviation Incidents.” A1-TermPaper.com, 2014, https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/human-factor-aviation/3903354. Accessed 6 Jul 2024.
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