The Significance of Human Error in Aviation

1814 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: discuss the significant of human error in aircraft accidents

Human Factors in the Aviation Industry

The aviation industry has grown into a billion dollar business since its first flight in 1903. More than 1.6 billion customers use the world commercial airlines for professional and leisure travel each year, and more than 40% of the world trade merchandises are transported by airplanes. The aviation industry is responsible for some 28 million jobs directly or indirectly, around the world (Michael, 2009).Since the mid-century, many government and private companies have been strenuously working to decrease the mishap rate in aviation, which have produced outstanding levels of safety. Granting, the overall mishap rate has dropped significantly over the years, regrettably decrease in human error associated mishaps in aviation have fail to match the decrease of disasters due to environmental and mechanical causes. Honestly, humans have been a growing cause in both military and commercial mishaps as automated equipment has become more dependable (Michael, 2009).

Humans, by our very own nature, commit errors or mistakes; for that reason, it must come as no amazement that human fault has been involved in a range of industrial mishaps, including about 80% of human error in the aviation industry. Actually, while the number of aviation mishaps related to automated failure has decreased significantly over the past 40 years; those related to human error have dropped at a much slower speed (Shappell & Wiegmann, 2003). After such findings, it would look like involvements designed in decreasing the occurrence or magnitudes of human error have not been as productive as those focused at automated or mechanical failures. Evidently, if mishaps are to be reduced more, additional importance must be employed ...

... middle of paper ...

...11).

Works Cited

Anca, J. M. 2013. “Safety Management and Human Factors” Retrieved from www.ashgate.com

"The Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS)," Approach, July - August 2004 Accessed on February 27 2014 Retrieved from http://hfs.sagepub.com/

HFACS Analysis of Military and Civilian Aviation Accidents: A North American Comparison. ISASI, 2004 Retrieved from http://hfs.sagepub.com/

Matthews, Gerald. 2012 “The handbook of operator fatigue” Retrieved from www.ashgate.com

Michael, H. M. 2009. “Aviation and Safety” Retrieved from http://www.oig.dot.gov/

Reason, James, 2011 “Human Error” Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

Shappell, S. A. & Wiegmann, D. A. 2003 “A human error approach to aviation accident analysis: The human factors analysis and classification system” Retrieved from http://www.errorsolutions.com/

Show More
Related

  • The Colgan Air Flight 3407 Crash Case

    541 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to “A Human Error Approach to Aviation Accident Analysis…”, both authors stated that HFACS was developed based off from the Swiss Cheese model to provide a tool to assist in the investigation process to identify the probable human cause (Wiegmann and Shappell, 2003). Moreover, the HFACS is broken down into four categories to identify the failure occur. In other words, leading up to adverse events the HFACS will identify the type error occur.

    Read More

  • Risk Management in the Hospital Setting

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    In order for hospitals to be reimbursed from government based insure companies certain standards must be met. When standards are not met, any subsequent cost in relationship to preventable errors will not be remunerated (Youngberg, 2011). These preventable errors are termed never events. Never events are considered error that can be prevented if certain checklist and guidelines are in place are followed such as medication errors, falls with injury, wrong surgical site, and pressure ulcers (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2012). There are currently ten mandated never events (Youngberg, 2011). In order to avoid these preventable human errors, risk manager help implement policies and procedure. This process based on risk analysis and outcomes which helps to improv...

    Read More

  • Medical Errors: Exploring the Healthcare System's Role in Errors

    2718 Words  | 6 Pages

    Designing an efficient safety healthcare system will change the paradigm through which medical error occurrence is perceived from. It is also ethically correct to adopt this system because it is the fair way through which medical errors should be tackled. In other words, this study establishes that system flaws are the biggest cause of medical errors and therefore, it is unfair to place all the blame on healthcare personnel. These factors abound, this study proposes a shift in the contextual analysis of medical errors from the individual to the systems involved.

    Read More

  • The Crossair Flight 3597 Crash

    1344 Words  | 3 Pages

    In conclusion, many contribution factors led to the Crossair flight 3597 crash but is mainly triggered by Crossair’s incapability of assessment, pilot error and lastly the air traffic controller. Analysis of a flight crash is important so that we will know the causes, thus being able tackle it, making sure that there are no other flight crashes like Crossair flight 3597.

    Read More

  • Collaborative Practice In Health Care

    938 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of them is the Crew Resource Management (CRM) present in the Aviation field that experts have come up. It is safety training that focuses team management that is very effective. The CRM programs essentially educate the crew members on how human competency may be limited. The operational perceptions emphasized include examination, promotion, seeking information related to operations, communicating projected exploits, decision-making and conflict resolution. The improvements on the safety records, which were observed after the implementation of this new safety training on commercial aviation, were tremendous compared to the previous record where 70 percent of the commercial flight accidents were as a result poor communication among crew members. Secondly, there is the Kaiser Permanente, SABR (Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation) Tool 2002 which reveals that indeed doctors and nurses more often than not have different communication styles partly owing to their training. Physicians are taught to be concise while nurses to be able to vividly describe medical conditions. SABR was created by a physician co-coordinator of the informatics at the Kaiser Permanente, Michael Leonard together with his colleagues and it has been used vastly in the healthcare systems, one of them being the Kaiser Permanente. It provides a framework of communication between medical

    Read More

  • Examples Of Medical Errors In Healthcare

    1621 Words  | 4 Pages

    The main objective of healthcare professionals is to provide the best quality of patient care and the highest level of patient safety. To achieve that objective, there are many organizations that help to improve the quality of care. One of the best examples is the Joint Commission. Unfortunately, the healthcare system is not free from total risks. In healthcare activities, there are possible errors, mistakes, near miss and adverse events. All of those negative events are unfortunately preventable. But, it is clear that errors caused in healthcare thousands of deaths in the United States.

    Read More

  • The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

    2253 Words  | 5 Pages

    Kohn, L. et al. 2000. To err is human: building a safer health system. Washington D.C. National Academies Press.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Frontline Error

    1113 Words  | 3 Pages

    When an error occurs, the first step usually taken is to identify the individual that is responsible for the mistake. Frontline providers in health care, like nurses and doctors, are usually held accountable when a mistake occurs that affects patient safety and care. While this is the easiest step, it is not the most effective. "When human error is viewed as a cause rather than a consequence, it serves as a cloak for our ignorance. By serving as an end point rather than a starting point, it retards further understanding [1]." Factors outlined in Henriksen 's hierarchy, e.g. individual characteristics, the nature of the work, human-system interfaces, work environment, and management, need to be taken into account to identify the source of the

    Read More

  • Case Based Reasoning

    1427 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kohn, L., Corrigan, J., & Donaldson, M. (1999). To err is human: building a safer health system. Committee on Quality of Health Care in America Institute of Medicine National Academy Press Washington, D.C.

    Read More

  • Patient Safety

    1173 Words  | 3 Pages

    Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency coordination task force with the help of government agencies. These government agencies are responsible for making health pol-icies regarding patient safety to which every HCO must follow (Schulman & Kim, 2000).

    Read More

  • Crew Resource Management and Aviation Safety

    2235 Words  | 5 Pages

    ... problem are under constant development and analysis, in a hope to avoid these situations. The civilian industry continues to lead in development due to commercialization, with the military not far behind. The only real deficiency in CRM program development seems to be the area of general aviation as described earlier. Until this problem is addressed, there will still be a glaring weakness in the general area of aviation safety. However, with the rate of technology increase and cheaper methods of instruction, we should begin to see this problem addressed in the near future. Until then, aviation will rely on civil commercial aviation the military to continue research and program development for the years to come, hopefully resulting in an increasingly safe method of travel and recreation.

    Read More

  • Human Factors On Aloha 243

    2368 Words  | 5 Pages

    After studying the Aloha aircraft accident in 1933, our group is interested in the investigation in Human performances factors in maintenance and inspection. We have divided the investigation into 5 aspects:

    Read More

  • Crew Resource Management

    2067 Words  | 5 Pages

    Over the course of the thirty years spanning from 1959 to 1979 there were many incidents that led to a need for a system to reduce human factors in major accidents, but in the seventies, there were some significant accidents that highlighted a need for action. A very notable crash was the Eastern Airlines Flight 401 on December 29, 1972. The flight was making their approach in Miami when the landing gear light would not illuminate. All members of the flight crew attempted to troubleshoot the problem with the autopilot on. Air Traffic Control (ATC) instructed the pilot to divert away from the airport at 2000 feet while they figured out the issue. The autopilot function...

    Read More

  • Accident Case Study: American Airlines Flight 1420

    1980 Words  | 4 Pages

    United States of America. Department of Transportation. FAA. Human Error and Commercial Aviation Accidents: A Comprehensive, Fine-Grained Analysis Using HFACS. FAA, July 2006. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. .

    Read More

  • Safety in Aviation Organizations

    1184 Words  | 3 Pages

    Through the years, as aircraft have become more complex, and numerous threats to aviation safety have been identified, a culture of unwavering professionalism and safety consciousness have become engrained into the ethical framework of aviation organizations. Since the initial establishment aviation operational and safety standards, multiple civilian and military aviation organizations have continuously contributed efforts towards looking for new and innovative ways to raise the bar on efficiency of flight operations and aviation safety through CRM. CRM is a vital tool to improving safety in aviation organizations and i...

    Read More

More about The Significance of Human Error in Aviation

Open Document