A review of human factors causations in commercial air transport accidents and incidents: From to 2000–2016

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paerosci.2018.03.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Human factors have been defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as “about people in their living and working situations; about their relationship with machines, with procedures and with the environment about them; and about their relationships with other people (at work)”. Human factors contribute to approximately 75% of aircraft accidents and incidents. As such, understanding their influence is essential to improve safety in the aviation industry. This study examined the different human factors causations in a random sample of over 200 commercial air transport accidents and incidents from 2000 to 2016. The main objective of this study was to identify the principal human factor contributions to aviation accidents and incidents. An exploratory research design was utilised. The qualitative data were recorded in a database, and were coded into categories about the flights (including date, manufacturer, carrier, state of occurrence, etc). These categories were then analysed using Chi-Squared tests to determine which were statistically significant in terms of having an influence on the accidents/incidents. The most significant human factor was found to be situational awareness followed by non-adherence to procedures. In addition, charter operations proved to have a significantly higher rate of human factor related occurrence as compared to other type of operations. A significant finding was that Africa has a high rate of accidents/incidents relative to the amount of traffic and aircraft movements. These findings reflect some of the more noteworthy incidents that have received significant media attention, including Air Asia 8501 on the 28th of December 2014, TransAsia Airways 235 on the 4th of February 2015, and Air France 447 on the 1st of June 2009; these accidents resulted in a significant loss of lives where situational awareness and non-adherence to procedures were significant contributing factors.

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to assess the role of human factors (HFs) in commercial air transport accidents and incidents from 2000 to 2016. The aim of this assessment is to provide the aviation industry with analytical insights to positively impact aviation safety. To provide better granularity, differences were assessed across 1) world regions, 2) types of commercial air operation, 3) phases of flight, and 4) type of human error. To facilitate this assessment three research questions were identified.

  • 1.

    What are the most common HFs causes in commercial air transport accidents and incidents over the period from 2000 to 2016?

  • 2.

    How are HFs causes distributed by type of operation in commercial air transport accidents and incidents attributed to HFs causation over the period 2000 to 2016?

  • 3.

    How are HFs causes distributed by world region (both state of operator and state of occurrence) in commercial air transport accidents and incidents attributed to HFs causation over the period 2000 to 2016?

“Human Factors” as an idea is a relatively new subject. The concept arose in aviation from work by the UK and North America around the ending of the Second World War [53]. The usage of the term HFs began informally in literature in British Air Force accident investigation reports in the 1940s; however, it was first officially used in 1957. The term was used to represent the application of scientific knowledge, facts, models, and theories derived mostly from various areas of human science such as sociology, psychology, physiology/medicine, engineering, management science, and anthropometrics [38].

Human error is by no means unique to aviation; it plays a central role in accidents and financial losses [93]. has defined human error as “any member of a set of human actions that exceeds some limits of acceptability - it is an out of tolerance action, where the limits of acceptable performance are defined by the system.” Nowadays, the contribution of human error in aviation accidents has been a major factor as 66% of hull-loss accidents were associated with flight crew in the period between 1992 and 2001 [22]. The impact of human error in general aviation is even more significant. For example, 79% of the fatal accidents that occurred in the United States in 2006 were attributed to pilot error [77].

In addition to safety issues, human error can cause huge financial losses for the airline industry in the form of tools destroyed, modifications of flight schedules such as flight delays, and fuel costs. For instance, 92% of the collisions between aircraft and ground vehicles or structures at airports that were contributed to human error, not including taxiway operations, costs the airline industry globally about 10 billion US dollars annually [79]. As such, it is essential to understand the role of human errors in aircraft accidents and incidents.

Section snippets

Flight crew selection

According to [56] for many years, the primary focus of flight crew selection was on the identification of individuals with superior flying skills and abilities. However [56], explains that, in recent years the aviation community has become increasingly aware that for a flight crew to complete their flight or mission, the flying skills and the ability to work well in a crew situation during the different phases of the flight are necessary. Crew resource management (CRM's) skill tests have been

Research design

Post accident and incident analysis is important for the aviation industry to ensure safety is improved from lessons learned the “hard way”. The goal being to ensure the lesson does not have to be repeated. As such, providing an up-to-date post accident analysis of accidents and incidents with HF causations is essential, given HFs is the biggest causal factor in commercial air transportation [90]. This research problem required a mixed method research design which was a combination of

Analysis

The accidents and incidents collected in the database were categorized into 6 types of operation in commercial air transport. In the absence of specific data by airline business model (number of flights operated on annual basis by type of carrier) it was necessary to develop a proxy to undertake the Chi-Squared test analysis. Knowledge and data for the Australian Aviation industry was used for this proxy. Data was gathered from Qantas Group (Qantas and JetStar Domestic), Virgin Australia

Qualitative analyses and discussion

A qualitative analysis of three recent airline accidents indicates the importance of situational awareness in the operational setting and how the degradation of situational awareness amongst crew is a significant contributory factor in an accident. As with an earlier study [72] most situational awareness errors within the reviewed accidents were at Endsley's [39] perception (Level 1) or understanding (Level 2) levels of situational awareness. Also, noted as occurring in the accidents is the

Conclusion

The impact of human error has been massive through the history of aviation in terms of casualties, injuries, apparatus destructed, costs of operations, and loss of productivity. In aviation, the consequences of human errors are projected to augment as traffic volume increases, systems getting more complicated, and the increase intentions of organizations in the aviation industry to cost-cutting strategies as a response to the current economic conditions. The research implemented an exploratory

References (71)

  • J. Caldwell

    Fatigue in aviation

    Trav. Med. Infect. Dis.

    (2005)
  • J. Goode

    Are pilots at risk of accidents due to fatigue?

    J. Saf. Res.

    (2003)
  • B.M. Hartzler

    Fatigue on the flight deck: the consequences of sleep loss and the benefits of napping

    Accid. Anal. Prev.

    (2014)
  • African Development Bank Group

    A poor safety record—largely attributable to low standards and lax supervision—is the greatest challenge facing the air transport industry in Africa today viewed 12/10/2015

  • Airbus

    Commercial Aviation Accidents 1958-2014: a Statisitcal Analysis

    (2015)
  • Airfleets.net

    Iliouchine Il-96

    (2015)
  • Associated Press

    Africa's Air Safety Record Among World's Worst

    (2007)
  • ATSB

    ATSB National Aviation Occurrence Database

    (2015)
  • Aviation Safety Network

    Accident Description: TANS Flight 222

    (2015)
  • Aviation Safety Network

    Accident Description: Vladivostokavia 352

    (2015)
  • Aviation Safety Network

    Accident Description: Yemenia Airways Flight 626

    (2015)
  • BEA

    Final Report on the accident 1 June 2009 to the Airbus A330 203 registered F-GZCP operated by Air France flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro – Paris. Author

    (2012)
  • BEA

    Safety Investigation into the Accident on 1 June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203, Flight AF447. Author

    (2011)
  • E. Berman et al.

    Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy Analysts

    (2017)
  • Boeing

    The role of human factors in improving aviation safety

    Aero Magazine

    (1999)
  • Boeing

    Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents, Worldwide Operations 1992-2001

    (2006)
  • Boeing

    Current Market Outlook 2017-2036

    (2017)
  • L. Bolman

    Aviation accident and the “theory of the situation”

  • J. Caldwell

    Crew schedules, sleep deprivation, and aviation performance

    SAGE journals

    (2012)
  • CASA

    Drug and Alcohol Management Plans

    (2015)
  • Ch-aviation.com

    Aircraft Quick Search

    (2015)
  • J. Creswell et al.

    Designing and Conducting: Mixed Methods Research

    (2011)
  • S.W.A. Dekker

    The Reinvention of Human Error

    (2002)
  • H.J. Ebermann et al.

    Human Factors on the Flight Deck

    (2013)
  • E. Edwards

    Introductory overview

  • M.R. Endsley

    Situation awareness

  • M.R. Endsley

    Situation awareness misconceptions and misunderstandings

    Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making

    (2015)
  • M.R. Endsley et al.

    Individual differences in pilot situation awareness

    Int. J. Aviat. Psychol.

    (1994)
  • FAA

    Safety Management System

    (2014)
  • J. Ford et al.

    Barriers to intra-aircraft communication and safety: the perspective of the flight attendants

    Int. J. Aviat. Psychol.

    (2013)
  • A. Gribanova
    (2015)
  • D. Harris

    Human Performance on the Flight Deck

    (2011)
  • J.W. Hedge et al.

    Selecting pilots with crew resource management skills

    Int. J. Aviat. Psychol.

    (2000)
  • S. Hradecky

    Crash: Allied Services AN12 at Juba on Nov 4th 2015, Impacted Hill in Initial Climb

    (2015)
  • ICAO

    Aviation Occurrence Categories

    (2011)
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text