Cherokee Human Factors

1141 Words3 Pages

Human Factors in Cherokee Incidents
Airplanes are now the safest mode of transportation, with only a handful of accidents per period compared to the most popular mode of transportation, cars. Yet often enough non-aviators tend to fear airplane rides and worry about relatives flying into town. So why would someone fear the safest mode of transportation? One of the potential reasons is that when an aircraft does rarely crash, it almost always makes a headline, alerting the public of an airplane that crashed and increasing fear. It is not necessarily a poor choice to make an aviation incident newsworthy, but rather the public should realize that if the news reported every car crash, there would be no possibility of reporting everything; but, …show more content…

These factors are called human factors. Human factors are a broad range of items that can cause a human to lose their focus or capacity. Some such examples include sleep, stress, medication / drugs, illness, fatigue, disorganization, rushing, and a list of others. In order to demonstrate how these human factors affect the aviation industry, four incidents will be displayed and will show that human factors are too imperative to consider to be ignored. The incidents selected all involve the Piper Cherokee, one of the most popular aircraft ever …show more content…

These drugs were all used to lower his blood pressure. However, the next factor is what seems to be the cause of the crash, which is runway distortion. The bright lights of the runway in a dark area can easily distort even the most professional, and precautions should be taken against this. Also, the ATC did not follow up on the pilot who did not land, nor begin the overdue aircraft procedures, so the investigation was needlessly postponed for nineteen hours (NTSB, 2003).
N850FS
This final incident took place on November 20, 2002, in Salt Lake City, Utah, at 4 pm (NTSB, 2003). The crash involved a student pilot and the instructor, who were flying the Piper Arrow (the complex version of the Cherokee) for the first time. Previous training was conducted in the Diamond Alarus, so the intention of this flight was to familiarize the student with the aircraft for further training. The incident took no fatalities, but the aircraft was substantially damaged after hitting a taxi light and a taxiway sign during a touch-and-go. The human factor in this incident, as reported by the instructor, was that the Alarus had a flap switch similar to the landing gear switch in the Arrow, so after the student became relaxed in the aircraft, the student flipped the switch, retracting the landing gear and “bellying” the

Open Document