Human Factors in Aircraft Engineering - Essay Example

All the 225 people (19 crew and 106 passengers) were feared dead in this accident, which further dented China Airlines’ dismal air safety record. Before we consider the detailed case study, it is necessary to dwell on the maintenance aspects of aircraft engineering especially with regard to its safety and security aspects, since this forms the bulwark of international air travel. The responsibilities of the maintenance crew is very significant since it could be mean the difference between life and death at say, 40,000 feet above the ground, if the proper maintenance is not carried out according to the strictest rigour and discipline, it would cause enormous losses of lives and properties.

Another aspect to air accidents is that these are capable of causing significant damages even to people and property on the ground where the debris of the ill-fated plane are scattered. The responsibilities for incidents or accidents are most often than not assigned to the operating staff, i.e., flying crew and pilots. This may not always be true. In some cases, there may be inherent deficiencies or construction defects in the basic structure of the aircraft itself. Because of which the accident may occur before, or shortly after take-off.

In which cases, the responsibility for incident or accident cannot shift to the flying crew but needs to be assigned to the ground staff, i.e. maintenance and operative personnel. Variable error model refers to condition when the type of error may be of discrete and unpredictable nature and would therefore, be difficult to judge and control. Under such circumstances, it is seen that constant error models, being of consistent and predictable nature, could be tackled more efficiently and effectively.

The possibilities of controlling constant error are higher than that of variable error. Error models may further be categorized into two models. Those, which could be solved, or made operationable, and the other