Defining Human Factors – Aviation History at a Glance
What is Airmanship?
Traditionally…
What is Aviate, Navigate, Communicate?
It’s a priority tool, it helps us prioritise.
It’s a great start but let’s understand more of what we need for maintaining safety.
Aviation Safety
Since the 50s accident rates have been reducing and are asymptotic, that is they have reduced close to zero per million departures but they are not zero.
The graph above shows that we have a relatively safe industry. The curve is not at zero however, as accidents still occur.
Why were there so many accidents? This was the beginning of the jet era. Engineering design and maintenance practices were having large learning experiences. Improved regulation and systemic practices helped drive this accident rate down.
Accidents in RPAS Operations
Do you think pilots are getting worse or do you think that these issues were always there? Like the tide going out and exposing the rocks at low tide?
Now with vast improvements to aircraft and technology, we are just seeing the human causes that were always there!
We are going to be taking a closer look at the human element of this graph as this can be directly influenced through training.