Airplane Crashes

664 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: How to improve airline safety

Airplane Crashes

There are many airplane accidents a year. On an average, 70 –80% are human error. Though there are many other factors, such as design factors, management, and weather factors, human error is the largest. Each one of these factors played a certain role in the three articles of accidents. The BOAC Comet, the PSA crashes in San Diego, and the Air Florida crash in Washington D.C., were analyzed differently, taking into consideration each possible factor. Within the follow, each accident will be discussed.

Summary

The cause in every accident of the BOAC Comet was a design factor. The pressurization limitations were determined wrongly. In the mid air collision in San Diego, the cause was human error of the Cessna pilot for changing headings, the Boeing for not being sure of having the right traffic insight, and the tower for not warning the aircrafts they were very close together when his warning went off. Finally, the Air Florida crash, investigators took into consideration the factors of the weather, engine performance, and pilot error.

Principle Mishaps / Human Factors

The Comet DH-106 was the first jetliner to carry passengers. The person to give credit for this accomplishment would be de Havilland. The DH-106 carried thirty-six passengers, had a pressurized cabin, a ceiling of 40,000ft, and traveled 500mph. According to the investigation of the BOAC Comet, the reason the comets were exploding, was because of the pressurization within the cabin. There was no real sufficient information prior to the flights that indicated there was a problem. At first, the pilots of the comet does not know that in roll out, they need to use a lesser angle of attack and keep the nose on the ground longer. ...

... middle of paper ...

...g its assigned heading from the tower (Liveware).

AIR FLORIDA

H-E

The engine performance of the aircraft (Hardware) due to the weather (Environment).

L-L

The captain being impatient and not getting de-iced (Liveware) and the first officer not speaking up (Liveware).

Conclusion

All accidents have many factors leading up to the event. In these three accidents, Human error was the biggest factor. With the comet, it was the human error of the engineers/manufactures stating falsely that the structure could withstand a certain amount of stress and pressure. In San Diego, ATC and both pilots contributed to the mid-air collision. This was a lack of communication. Finally, with Air Florida, the captain’s attitude, lack of knowledge, and insufficiency with the checklist got them in trouble.

Bibliography:

Air Disaster; Volume 1

Air Disaster; Volume 2

Show More
Related

  • Challenger Shuttle Crash Case Study

    946 Words  | 2 Pages

    The failure was due to a faulty design unacceptably sensitive to a number of factors. (NASA, n/d)

    Read More

  • 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

  • Federal Aviation Act Of 1958

    931 Words  | 2 Pages

    After World War II there was an excess of aircraft and trained pilots in the United States, which significantly increase in private and commercial flights. An increase in the use of private aircraft and large passenger planes meant an increase in the possibly of aircraft safety incidents. Even though safety measures had been put in place to tend to large number of aircraft in the skies, in late 1950’s there were two unfortunate accidents that finally led to legislation that would be a major change to the world of aviation that affects us even today. The introduction of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 spurred several changes in aviation that eventually led to the creation of the Federal Aviation Administration.

    Read More

  • De Havilland Comet Airplane Failure

    1220 Words  | 3 Pages

    Following World War II and the jet engine technology that emerged largely toward its end, aerospace engineers knew well that the technology had great potential for use in the commercial aviation industry. The Comet was the first aircraft to utilize jet propulsion; however, its designers failed to consider the metallurgy of the aircraft’s materials under flight conditions or the consequences of their atypical window design. The aircraft was designed by Britain’s De Havilland Aircraft Company and entered service in May 1952. After a year of service, however, the design issues mentioned above resulted in the failure of several Comet aircraft. Extensive evaluations revealed that repeated pressurization stress on the aircraft’s main cabin had caused its structure to fail.

    Read More

  • Engineering disasters

    694 Words  | 2 Pages

    On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia was lost due to structural failure in the left wing. On take-off, it was reported that a piece of foam insulation surrounding the shuttle fleet's 15-story external fuel tanks fell off of Columbia's tank and struck the shuttle's left wing. Extremely hot gas entered the front of Columbia's left wing just 16 seconds after the orbiter penetrated the hottest part of Earth's atmosphere on re-entry. The shuttle was equipped with hundreds of temperature sensors positioned at strategic locations. The salvaged flight recorded revealed that temperatures started to rise in the left wing leading edge a full minute before any trouble on the shuttle was noted. With a damaged left wing, Columbia started to drag left. The ships' flight control computers fought a losing battle trying to keep Columbia's nose pointed forward.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Columbia’s Final Mission

    975 Words  | 2 Pages

    Rodney Rocha is a NASA engineer and co-chair of Debris Assessment Team (DTS). When possibility of wing damage appeared he requested an additional imagery to obtain more information in order to evaluate the damage. This demonstrates that he actually tried to resolve the issue. However, due to absence of clear organizational responsibilities in NASA those images were never received. Since foam issue was there for years and risk for the flights was estimated as low management decided not to proceed with this request. After learning of management decision Rocha wrote an e-mail there he stated that foam damage could carry grave hazard and have to be addressed. At the same time this e-mail was not send to the management team. Organizational culture at NASA could be described as highly bureaucratic with operations under standard procedures only. Low-end employees like Rocha are afraid to bring any safety-related issues to the management due to delay of the mission. They can be punished for bringing “bad news”. This type of relationship makes it impossible for two-way communication between engineers and managers, which are crucial for decision-making in complex env...

    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

  • An Analysis of the Crash of Air France Flight 4590

    1462 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Ethics in Aerospace

    2166 Words  | 5 Pages

    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 ...

    Read More

  • Crash of Glo-Air Flight 73

    671 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Eastern Flight 401

    2748 Words  | 6 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Human Factors On Aloha 243

    2368 Words  | 5 Pages

    During the pre-flight inspection, there were no damages or abnormal conditions on Aloha 243 were found. Furthermore, In 1988, when the accident of Aloha 243 happened, Federal Aviation Administration did not have requirement that forced airline operators to carry out inspection between each flight. We can say that the crevice was exacerbated by the salty and moistly air, if inspection was carried out after each flight, this problem must be able to be aware and prevented.

    Read More

  • The Causes Of The Challenger Disaster

    976 Words  | 2 Pages

    The presidential commission examining the Challenger mishap put a decent part of the fault on defective administration rehearses at the space organization. Key data was not being identified with top administration, for example, the developing worry about the O-rings. It additionally blamed NASA for withholding data from the general

    Read More

  • Plane Crash

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    When I stepped into the large neatly organized white polished plane, I never though something would go wrong. I woke up and found myself on an extremely hot bright sunny desert island filled with shiny soft bright green palm trees containing rough bright yellow hard felt juicy apples. The simple strong plane I was in earlier shattered into little pieces of broken glass and metal when crashing onto the wet slimy coffee colored sand and burning with red orange colored flames. After my realization to this heart throbbing incident I began to run pressing my eight inch footsteps into the wet squishy slimy light brown sand looking in every direction with my wide open eyes filled with confusion in search of other survivors. After finding four other survivors we began moving our small petite weak legs fifty inches from the painful incident. Reaching our destination which was a tiny space filled with dark shade blocking the extreme heat coming from the bright blue sky, I felt my eyelids slowly moving down my light colored hazel eyes and found myself in a dream. I was awakened the next day from a grumbling noise coming from my empty stomach.

    Read More

  • Proper Aircraft Maintenance

    884 Words  | 2 Pages

    As the development of aviation industry grows, more and more aircraft crashes occur. There are many reasons that lead to aircraft crashes, but one of them, is because of improper aircraft maintenance. Why is proper aircraft maintenance so important? Proper aircraft maintenance is critical in order to keep the aircraft can function properly, every aircraft part is in good condition and ensure the safety of pilots and passengers. Proper maintenance has many parts. The most common part is inspections, which pilots do them every day; the main part is overhaul and repair of an aircraft; and maintenance documentation is another important part of aircraft maintenance which improper maintenance documentation has caused many incidents.

    Read More

More about Airplane Crashes

Open Document