Pilot Error and Aircraft Accidents

"Pilot Error" is the identified cause of a large fraction of aircraft accidents, and the role of pilot error (and other human errors, e.g. by ground controllers) is tending to increase as improvements in aircraft design, weather forecasting, and other technical areas of aviation reduce the role of structure failures and other "unavoidable" causes of aviation mishaps. By the 1970s, fifty-five percent of accidents were attributed to pilot error (Hurst 13). Clearly, the human factor, in various forms, plays an ever increasing role in air accidents.

Human error may take many forms, from gross displays of bad airmanship to unconscious errors which can be attributed to fatigue or to unconscious perceptual errors. When human error is identified as the primary or contributory cause of an accident, our principal concern is not to fix blame, but to identify corrective actions which can be taken in training or procedures to reduce the likelihood of similar accidents in the future.

Broadly, human-error accidents can be divided into three categories. One, reckless or careless flying, allows little scope for direct preventive action; we can tighten up on licensing practices, but some people are always going to do careless things in the air, even though they know better (Slepyan 10-12). Since a major fraction of all accidents are midair collisions, however, we can develop our understanding of "defensive flying" practices, by which pilots can guard themselves against collisions due

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pposition to the airline accountants concern for productivity (Hurst 187-91). Crew fatigue does not so much "cause" accidents as it sharply raises pilot susceptibility to accident-causing errors of judgement. One we have already mentioned is "set," or the tendency to expect what we have been conditioned to expect (Beaty 107). A pilot was told by a tower that there was no local traffic; he was thus less concerned about keeping his eyes outside the cockpit, and had a midair collision. "Set" can be particularly dangerous when a pilot is poised for a particular action, and a stimulus incorrectly triggers that action. In one instance, an airliner copilot had a too-eager hand on the landing-gear lever. The pilot noticed this, and called out "not yet!" The copilot expected the next words to be "gear up," and when the pilot called up he at once actuated the lever (Beaty 108). Closely related to "set" is psychological motivation and arousal level. If conditions are too easy, we tend to daydream; if they become too difficult, we may panic. As noted earlier, "too difficult" is a common cause of pilot errors (Hurst vii). The trend towards increasing cockpit automation however, raises the risks of complacency, or "too easy." I

Category: Psychology - P