Fifteen years have passed since American Airlines flight 1420 experienced a botched landing tragically killing 10 passengers, the captain, and injuring 110 others. Thankfully, 24 passengers were uninjured, and the first officer survived. This horrific accident could have turned out much worse, but it could have also been easily avoided. June 1st, 1999, captain Richard Buschmann and first officer Michael Origel were about to embark on their third and final leg of the day, after already working for ten hours on two other trip legs. They had arrived at Dallas/Fort Worth Texas around 20:10 CST and were eager to proceed on their final trip of the day to Little Rock, Arkansas. Poor weather in the region prevented their assigned aircraft from arriving on time, closely pushing them ever closer to their fourteen hour duty limits for the day. The first officer realizing their situation contacted the dispatchers to notify them they would need to find a substitute aircraft or the flight would need to be cancelled. Both pilots were well aware of the impending storms in the area, including around the destination airport, but they decided that they should be able to beat the storms there. This was one of the first signs of suffering from get-there-itis, along side of several hazardous attitudes. Once an aircraft was substituted, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82, the pilots were able to depart at 22:40, 2 hours and 12 minutes after their scheduled departure time, 12 hours into their 14 hour duty day. On this leg of their long day, the captain was the flying pilot in control of the aircraft, and the first officer was the non-flying pilot, handling such things as navigation and the radios. After only 14 minutes in the air, 22:54, they received the fi... ... middle of paper ... ...t. 1999. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. . 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. . United States of America. Department of Transportation. FAA. The Human Factors Analysis and Classification System–HFACS. By Scott A. Shappell and Douglas A. Wiegmann. National Technical Information Service, Feb. 2000. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. . United States of America. Department of Transportation. NTSB. DCA99MA060. NTSB, 28 May 2002. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. .
Shortly after takeoff D.B. Cooper handed Flo Schaffner, a flight attendant with less than 2 years of flying experience, a note. Schaffner immediately stuffed the note in the pocket of her uniform incorrectly assuming it was a come-on from Cooper a room number to his Seattle hotel or his telephone number. Noticing this Cooper later told her, “You’d better read that. I have a bomb” Cooper then gestured toward the briefcase he was carrying on his lap. Schaffner soon share the note with fellow flight attendant Tina Mucklow. The pair showed the note to the cockpit Capt. William Scott, First Officer Bob Rataczak, and Flight Engineer H.E. Anderson. Captain...
Surface Transportation Board (2012). FY 2012 Annual Report. Washington, DC: Chairman Daniel R. Elliott III
They took off without any problems. The weather was pleasant and they were fully equipped and ready. Until 3:45 p.m., the tower operators in Fort Lauderdale received a bizarre message from the flight leader, Lt. Charles Taylor. Lt. Taylor reported that they could not see land and that they were off-course. He also reported that they were lost. Baffled, the tower operators told Lieutenant Taylor to go westward, but he answered that they did not know which way west was.
Although the flight was scheduled to depart from JFK Airport at about 7:00 p.m., it was delayed due to a disabled piece of ground equipment and concerns about a suspected passenger mismatch with baggage. The airplane took off at 8:18 p.m., shortly at 8:25 p.m., Boston air route traffic control center (ARTCC) instructed the pilots to climb and maintain an altitude of 19,000 feet and then lower down to 15,000 feet. However, at 8:26 p.m., Boston ARTCC amended TWA flight 800's altitude clearance, advising the pilots to maintain an altitude of 13,000 feet. At 8:29 p.m., the captain stated, "Look at that crazy fuel flow indicator there on number four... see that?" One minute later Boston ARTCC advised them to climb and maintain 15,000 feet to which the pilot replied: “Climb thrust”. After an extremely loud and quick sound, the cockpit voice recorder stopped recording at 8:31 p.m. At that moment, the crew of an Eastwind Airlines Boeing 737 flying nearby reported an explosion in the sky. TWA Flight 800 aircraft had broken up and crashed into the sea, 8 miles south of East Moriches, killing all on board. (1,2)
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.
Mead, H. K. (2002, June 22). Office of the Inspector General. Retrieved Feb 12, 2014, from US Department of Transportation: http://www2.oig.dot.gov/sites/dot/files/pdfdocs/cc2002180.pdf
Every person who has gets behind the wheel of a motor vehicle will be involved in some sort of automobile collision at some point in his or her lifetime. Traffic accidents account for over twenty thousand deaths each year and more than ten times as many injuries. There are a number of factors that contribute to these types of collisions, however, new and evolving laws can account for a large portion of successful preventable measures. In order for laws to be changed or added for the purpose of safer roads and highways, lawmakers have to first look at what factors contribute to such unsafe conditions. The top five causes of automobile accidents that cause injury are distracted drivers, driver fatigue, drunk driving, speeding, and aggressive driving. Laws can be proposed to reduce and even eliminate each of these risks.
This report is on the Crossair flight 3597 crash which happens at Zurich airport on 24th November 2001. Analysis of Crossair flight 3597 will be covered, which includes details such as facts of Crossair flight 3597 crash, and the three contributing factors involved in the air accident. The three contributing factors are mainly Crossair, pilot error and communications with air traffic controllers.
Travelling at a speed twice that of sound might seem to be something futuristic; however, this feat has already been achieved almost 40 years ago by the world’s only supersonic passenger aircraft-The Concorde. Concorde brought a revolution in the aviation industry by operating transatlantic flights in less than four hours. The slick and elegant aircraft with one of the most sophisticated engineering was one of the most coveted aircrafts of its time. However, this was all destined to end when Air France Flight 4590 was involved in a tragic disaster just outside the city of Paris on July 25, 2000. The crash killed 113 people, but more disastrous was its impact. The belief and confidence people had with Concorde gradually started to fade, and finally Concorde was grounded after two and a half years of the crash. Official reports state that the main cause of the crash was a piece of metal dropped by a Continental aircraft that flew moments before Concorde, but, over the last decade, the report has met a lot of criticism, and many alternative hypotheses have thus been proposed.
The Department of Transportation released a report analyzing three different surveys and studies taken in 2011 and 2012. They found that, at any giv...
Safety in the ethics and industry of aerospace technology is of prime importance for preventing tragic malfunctions and crashes. Opposed to automobiles for example, if an airplane breaks down while in mid-flight, it has nowhere to go but down. And sadly it will often go down “hard” and with a high probability of killing people. The Engineering Code of Ethics states first and foremost that, “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public.” In the aerospace industry, this as well holds very true, both in manufacturing and in air safety itself. Airline safety has recently become a much-debated topic, although arguments over air safety and travel have been going ...
On November 28, 2004 at about 10:00 a.m. mountain standard time, a Canadair (now Bombardier) CL-600-2A12 (Challenger 600), tail number N873G, crashed into the ground during takeoff at Montrose Regional Airport (MJT), Montrose, Colorado. The aircraft was registered to Hop-a-Jet, Inc., and operated by Air Castle Corporation doing business as Global Aviation. (Insert Here)The flight was operating under Part 135 Code of Federal Regulations. The captain filed the flight under an IFR Flight plan. Of the six passengers on board, three died from fatal injuries and the other three sustained major injuries. The aircraft was totaled due to the impact with the ground and a post-crash fire.
This tragic accident was preventable by not only the flight crew, but maintenance and air traffic control personnel as well. On December 29, 1972, ninety-nine of the one hundred and seventy-six people onboard lost their lives needlessly. As is the case with most accidents, this one was certainly preventable. This accident is unique because of the different people that could have prevented it from happening. The NTSB determined that “the probable cause of this accident was the failure of the flightcrew.” This is true; the flight crew did fail, however, others share the responsibility for this accident. Equally responsible where maintenance personnel, an Air Traffic Controllers, the system, and a twenty cent light bulb. What continues is a discussion on, what happened, why it happened, what to do about it and what was done about it.
Prior to 1959, faulty equipment was the probable cause for many airplane accidents, but with the advent of jet engines, faulty equipment became less of a threat, while human factors gained prominence in accident investigations (Kanki, Helmreich & Anca, 2010). From 1959 to 1989, pilot error was the cause of 70% of accident resulting in the loss of hull worldwide (Kanki, Helmreich & Anca, 2010). Due to these alarming statistics, in 1979 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) implemented a workshop called “Resource Management on the Flightdeck” that led to what is now known as Crew Resource Management (CRM) or also known as Cockpit Resource Management (Rodrigues & Cusick, 2012). CRM is a concept that has been attributed to reducing human factors as a probable cause in aviation accidents. The concepts of CRM weren’t widely accepted by the aviation industry, but through its history, concepts, and eventual implementation, Crew Resource Management has become an invaluable resource for pilots as well as other unrelated industries around the world.
The primary cause is of airplane accidents does at some stage contain an element of a person being unable to discharge his duties correctly and in an accurate manner. More than 53% accidents are the result of ignorance or faults by the pilot during flight. Other staff is responsible for about 8% accidents. The most obvious errors by pilot are made during the take off or landing on the runway. Additionally errors can occur during the maintenance of the airplane outside the plane, whereby a lack of thorough inspection and oversight can lead to complication during mid-flight. Fueling and loading of the plane also sometimes create problems (Shapiro, 2001).