Measuring Safety Perceptions of Aviation Crew

1. Introduction (background about the issue/topic under investigation):

1.1 Aviation:

The discovery of flight has taken man to places he never imagined he could reach. The aviation industry, which is an output of this discovery, is now a global enterprise with an estimated 3 billion people travelling by air in the year 2012 alone (ICAO, 2014).

Safety related research in aviation has received a lot of importance since the birth of the commercial aviation industry. Even though aviation is considered to be one of the safest means of transportation available, it has still a long way to go before it can match the perceptions of people. With some nations even having achieved the mark of less than one accident per million departures (ICAO). An insight into this accident data clearly suggests that while regions such as North America and certain countries in Western Europe are posting lower rates, countries from Latin America and Africa are no where close (ICAO).

The focus of human factors research is to try and put man into the center of the picture with as little effort as possible. With almost 80% of deaths occurring worldwide falling under transport related accidents (citation needed), the attention that safety in this area has received from researchers is justified. While scientific advancements have been able to bring down these numbers, uneven spread of these advanced technologies has prevented the same from happening throughout the world. With money and political stability also being reasons behind the availability of these scientific advancements, some countries are falling behind in the race (ICAO).

1.2 Errors:

1.3 Safety in Aviation industry:

1.3.1 Air Crew

1.3.2 Crew Resource Management (CRM):

1.4 Culture:

1.4.1 Overview:

1.4.2 Cultural factors in aviation industry:

1.5 Cultural factors and Safety:

Hofstede’s dimensions on national culture have been used as a benchmark by most researchers trying to work in the area of cross-cultural research. An intensive review of various cross cultural methodologies that can be used in research have been summarized (Schaffer & Riordan, 2003).

1.6 Safety culture:

1.6.1 Measuring safety culture:

1.7 Summary:

2. Aim (state aim, research question and or hypothesis):

Aviation is one of the safest high-risk industries around. In order to improve this perception air travel needs to be safe uniformly throughout the world. While technology and scientific advancements give developed countries the edge, the people from other nations need to feel safe too. If successful this research will help include culture as an important factor in safety culture models of aviation industry.