bances of circadian rhythms are of critical importance in ensuring the safety of flight crews and passengers.
In 1988, Aloha Airlines B737-200 suffered structural fuselage failure and subsequent decompression. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducted an investigation of this accident and found that several human factors issues to be at work in leading to the accident (Hawkins, 1993). Human factors, which are inclusive of human error in general and error linked to such factors as absenteeism, excessive workload/inadequate staffing, poor worker training and lower levels of skills, and worker fatigue or subpar performance, are therefore important aspects of accident prevention and preventive maintenance. Preventive and predictive (as opposed to reactive) maintenance is, as will be discussed in Chapter II below, particularly critical in the content of aviation maintenance. Subsequently, a limited number of other studies have examined the ways in which human factors nega
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