The Structure of Aviation Safety - Research Proposal Example

The Structure of Aviation Safety Pertaining to Controlled Flight into Ground and Human Factors Introduction Controlled Flight into Terrain arises when a serviceable aircraft is flown, under the supervision of a qualified pilot, into terrain - water or obstacles - with insufficient alertness on the part of the pilot of the approaching accident. CFIT also may be explained as those mishaps in which a flight crew inadvertently fly an aircraft into the terrain or a man-made obstruction under situations in which the aircraft is flyable. It is to be noted that the crucial feature in these types of mishaps is the fact that the aircraft is flyable and within the control of the crew. Usually, mechanical or equipment failures are not considered the abrupt reason of the accident; rather the mishap most likely occurred due to pilot or human error. This essay looks into the structure of aviation safety pertaining to controlled flight into ground and human factors Commercial Aviation CFIT Mishaps Commercial Aviation CFIT Mishaps can be put into two broad categories on the basis of the phase of flight: Level flight in which the airliner is flying straight and at a stable altitude; and descent, approach, and landing in which the airplane is lessening its altitude and trying to land safely. Although the approach and landing phase of flight takes only 4% of the total flight time, 50% of all mishaps - not just CFIT accidents - happen in this phase of flight. A research that evaluated commercial CFIT accidents between 1988 and1994 established that approximately 70% of these accidents happened during the descent, approach, and landing phase, whereas 20% occurred in the en-route phase. It is considered that the landing phase of flight would account for the greater part of commercial CFIT accidents; it as well is rational to consider that the reason of these accidents is most likely due to major terrain aspects for example mountains. This is the reality in the majority of cases; though, a major portion (40%) of the commercial CFIT landing-phase mishaps involved no noteworthy terrain aspects. Generally 87% of these mishaps happens during Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC), with 20% happening when the aircraft unintentionally changeover from Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC) to IMC. The majority of (71%) CFIT accidents involve aircraft intended to take no more than nine travelers. On the other hand, large airplane with highly skilled pilots flying scheduled flights along known and common flight corridor are not invulnerable to CFIT, for example as proved by the crash on December 20,1995 of American Airlines Flight 965 flight from Miami, FL to Cali, Columbia with 167 passengers and crew on board. One hundred and sixty-three people died in this mishap. This accident is as well important since it was the first crash of a Boeing 757 that resulted in fatalities. Additionally, the losses linked with CFIT are inexplicably high. It is accounted that three-quarters of all CFIT mishaps cause the death of most passengers and crew on board the aircraft (Moroze and Snow n. pag.). Controlled flight into terrain generally happens at speed and as a result lots of such mishaps are deadly. According to the Advisory Circular 1 of 2009 for Air Operators the importance is the proper preparation, good decision-making, and being able to securely maneuver the aircraft all through the entire operating range. As CFIT implies that the aircraft is operating correctly, the key basis for such accidents is what is usually considered the pilot error. Consequently, it is the pilots duty to make certain that he or she is trained for the flight, that the aircraft is appropriately prepared for the flight, and that the flight is flown as per the correct rules and aircraft operating limits. Ground proximity warning systems and the new terrain awareness and warning systems using GPS have the capability to lessen CFIT mishaps on takeoffs and landings. These methods present tools for pilots to use to elevate their protection while operating near to terrain and obstacles. Conversely, all pilots should identify the restrictions of his or her information base and what bits and pieces are incorporated in the database. Effort to reduce CFIT mishaps begins on the ground. Pilots need to practice to securely perform the maneuvers necessary all through the takeoff, initial climb, ultimate approach, and landing phases of flight. Whether to use visual flight rules (VFR) or instrument flight rules (IFR), both flights has crucial flight segment. The flight segments planning and handling decides, to a large extent, the safety of the flight. Flight Safety Foundations CFIT Checklist, offers an illustration of how to analyze CFIT risk. Making use of the checklist to appraise particular flight operations will increase pilot understanding of the CFIT risk (DGCA AC/1/2009 n. pag.). International safety standards and a harmonized strategy organized together by governments, regulators, manufacturers, industries and operators have succeeded in decreasing the rate of accidents. However these efforts have to continue. In a constantly transforming world, aviation industries must continue to adapt so that they appropriately manage emerging problems and put in to action the lessons learned to improve the industry’s safety against accidents. Because human error is a main feature to aviation incidents and mishaps, human factors must be an important focus of any aviation safety approach (skybrary.aero, n.pag.). Education and Training Aid In the past, the majority of the study linked to CFIT mishaps and the improvement of suggested safety practices has been completed for air carrier type operations. The Controlled Flight into Terrain, Education and Training Aid, is one of the model of such study done by industry and government. This document is produced by the Flight Safety Foundation, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and the FAA, the aid offers a good narration of the past, record general risks, and offers some vital suggestion for combating CFIT mishaps for air carrier operations. The CFIT’s Top 10 Recommended Intervention Strategies: Increase pilot alertness on accident causes. Develop safety traditions within the aviation population. Endorse progress and use of a low cost terrain clearance mechanism. Enhance pilot training towards decision-making and human factors. Advance the quality and essence of weather briefs. Improve the flight appraisal and instrument fitness check. Design and distribute mountain-flying technique consultative material. Regulate and expand use of symbols for towers and wires. Use high visibility paint and other visibility enhancing materials on obstacles. Avoid the force to continue the flight where enduring may compromise safety (DGCA AC/1/2009 n. pag,). Technical Remedies: Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) In early 1970s the cost of CFIT mishaps, particularly regarding commercial aviation, was excessively high. Hence, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) made mandatory that airlines install GPWS in the commercial aviation fleet. The objective was to provide warning of terrain contact, accounting for such items as crew’s detection and response times, and take the flight crew out of the interpretation loop. The technology of the GPWS was to offer a look-down capacity that would take into account the increase of terrain together with a projection of that terrain into the aircraft’s flight path and merge that data with piloting data to offer an audio indication to the flight crew that a unsafe situation was about to happen. Additional concern linked with this design includes late warnings - where the crew cannot respond in time or no warning at all particularly in certain situations, for instance landing. Another important problem with the GPWS is that it can supply an alarm that the aircraft is nearing a dangerous situation; however the terrains ascend is so severe that it does not give sufficient time for the crew to maneuver out of the place. In such a situation, the aircraft will crash into terrain, despite of any actions taken by the crew. The response time of the pilot is crucial to the success of the equivocal maneuver. The GPWS induction reduced CFIT mishaps from about 9 per year in the previous seven years to about 4 per year after (Gurevich, 1991; but see also Proctor, 1997). In the year 1997, the Gore Commission on Aviation and Safety (Gore, 1997) reported that CFIT remains a major aviation safety issue. Gore Commission suggested that both commercial and military passenger plane should have Enhanced GPWS installed which provide more warning time. Additionally to this look-ahead ability, the EGPWS as well integrates the use of a global digital terrain elevation database and a color coded display of dangerous terrain (Moroze and Snow, n. pag). Human Factors and Training Issues in CFIT Concern over CFIT occurrences was first reflected in regulations after a B-727 struck a mountain during a non-precision approach to Dulles, Virginia. A premature descent was attributed to ambiguous pilot-controller communications and unclear information in the approach chart. This was one in a series of accidents in which otherwise airworthy aircraft were flown into the surface by properly certified flight crews. Implementation of the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) requirement for large, turbine-powered airplanes engaged in international operations and its ground counterpart, the Minimum Safe Altitude Warning (M SAW) as a feature of the automated radar terminal system (ARTS-3), were deemed the solution to preclude this type of accidents. Although GPWS has reduced the incidence of CFIT occurrences, on balance it is a fair assessment that it has fallen shorts of fulfilling the expectations with which it was introduced. However an account of the shortcomings in the introduction of the GPWS as well as operational solutions to improve GPWS effectiveness as a safety net is being discussed. Through the 1980’s, keenness concerning Human Factors directed industry efforts to find answers to CFIT mishaps all the way through improved flight crew performance The DC-8 crash while approaching to Portland, Oregon, after running out of fuel, was one of the CFIT mishaps ascribed to failure in flight crew management and discipline. It caused the start of Dedicated Human Factors training for flight crews, known as crew resource management (CRM) and Line Oriented Flight Training (LOFT), accentuating the requirement for superior intra-cockpit communication, exchange of appropriate operational data and situational responsiveness boomed across the airlines. This was accompanied by the expected exhortations about cockpit discipline and professional behavior, elusive terms which escape sound definition and only generates unimaginative solutions with rather dubious results. Along with Ground Proximity Warning (GPW) the involvement of CRM and LOFT to aviation safety has been immense; the occurrence of human error in CFIT mishaps proposes that Human Factors training is only an incomplete answer to CFIT incidents. Decreasing CFIT incidents needs the understanding that such mishaps and occurrences are system-created, in the sense; they are induced by inadequacy in the aviation system, together with shortages in the organization which represent it. The mishap in which a DC-10 crashed into a volcano in Antarctica since an erroneous coordinate in its computerized flight plan has been stated as an illustration of this inadequacy and the general nature of CFIT incidences. Corrective and restructuring actions intended at reducing CFIT should tackle system failures and administrative shortages, as these are the regions where the maximum gains in safety enhancement can be accomplished. Corrective action based on rules, design and training has performed convincingly well in the earlier period as the stage of aviation technology engaged to attain its production target - transportation of people and freight securely and efficiently - was comparatively low, and the connections linking people and technology uncomplicated and expected. Conversely, the relatively straightforward level of technology employed up to 70’s forced substantial restrictions on system objectives that in turn deprived of the system chances to foster human error. For instance these restrictions comprise simple air traffic control systems, high weather less operations limited to visual conditions, flexible schedule, shorter legs, and demanding essential cognitive expertise and act in response to simple, well-rehearsed mind models. Even though common features can be seen in mishaps and occurrences from the start of aviation, human error in those periods of little technology had more effect on operational personnel for the reason that of inadequacy in equipment design, poor training or silent regulations rather than stimulated by strict system demands. Taking account of this background, increase or addition of local defenses by set of laws, designs or training emerged as a rational approach to pursue. Such a strategy offered substantial yields and elevated aviation to its position as the safest mode of transportation. The drawback following this improvement is that all equipment intended and visualized to offer wider berth to human error ultimately forced greater demands over the very humans they were supposed to lessen, by rising system production demands. Scientific progresses are never used to enhance the security of the aviation system all together by making broader safety margins. They are used to extend system restrictions, leaving safety margins mostly unaffected. Air transportation in the 90’s has become enormously multifaceted system. It is moreover very susceptible, even the nominal interference can lead to disastrous consequences. In order to reduce human error and exploit production, high-technology has been inducted. People who observed this introduction point out two fundamental mistakes in it: such introduction was technology based rather than human centered, and it stopped short at the micro rather than at the macro level of system intend study. The effect of the first point is that the skill, rather than getting rid of human error, has just displaced it. The lack of macro study in the introduction of technology makes the system complex and hard to understand conceptually rather than simple and easy to know. The effects of the relations across people, technology and other system workings in the wellbeing of the system stay mostly unidentified. People and knowledge act together at every human-machine interface. Both components are highly mutually dependent, and function under the principle of shared causation; in the sense people and machines are affected by the similar underlying actions in the close environment. In addition these interactions do not take place in a vacuum, however within the background of institutions, their objectives, strategies and dealings. Accepting the principle of shared causation and the control of the organizational background up on the aviation system processes is vital to understanding CFIT incidences and their avoidance. Monitoring shared causation will evade the bit by bit approaches based on design, training or regulations which have beset the precedent safety plans. Examining the organizational background will allow to appraise whether organizational objectives and aspirations are stable or contradictory with the design of the organization, and whether the operational employees has been supplied with the essential means to attain such objectives (Maurino, n. pag.). Conclusion More than a training package what is considered necessary to decrease CFIT occurrences is an educational packages, aimed at both to organization and operational personnel, to explain them with the perceptions of high technology system breakdown, how they manifest through organizational shortages, how they possibly will lead to occurrences and mishaps and the methods to deal with them. The second response is to bear in mind Human Factors deliberations while system designs, both at the micro and macro level. At the micro level, the Human Factors study should go towards the more multifaceted cognitive, data processing and communication processes involving people and linking people and technology. At the macro level the interface linking the human-machine sub-systems have to be well thought-out within the background of the aviation system all together, together with the acknowledged system objectives and the capital owed to attain them (Maurino, n. pag.). Work Cited DGCA AC/1/2009, Controlled Flight into Terrain, Advisory Circular 1 of 2009 for Air Operators 26 March 2009 Government Of India Civil Aviation Department 18 Oct. 2009 < http://dgca.nic.in/circular/ops1_2009.pdf > Moroze, M.L. and Snow, M.P. Causes and Remedies of Controlled Flight into Terrain in Military and Civil Aviation Air Force Research Laboratory Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton OH. 18 Oct. 2009 < http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA430280&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf > Maurino, D. Human Factors and Training Issues in CFIT Accidents and Incidents Flight Safety and Human Factors Study Group, ICAO, 18 Oct. 2009 skybrary.aero., Human Factors Strategy Operators Guide to Human Factors in Aviation 10 August 2009 Briefing Note, 18 Oct. 2009 < http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Human_Factors_Strategy_(OGHFA_BN) > Read More