Crew Information Requirements Analysis

Boeing developed the crew information requirements analysis process to better understand how flight crews use the data and cues they are given. It provides a way to analyze how crews acquire, interpret, and integrate data into information upon which to base their actions. The analysis helps Boeing understand how the crew arrived or failed to arrive at an understanding of events. Since it was developed in the mid-1990s, such analysis has been applied internally in safety analyses supporting airplane design, accident and incident analyses, and research.

Training Aids

Boeing has applied its human factors expertise to help develop training aids to improve flight safety. An example is the company’s participation with the aviation industry on a takeoff safety training aid to address rejected takeoff runway accidents and incidents. Boeing proposed and led a training tool effort with participation from line pilots in the industry. The team designed and conducted scientifically based simulator studies to determine whether the proposed training aid would be effective in helping crews cope with this safety issue. Similarly, the controlled flight into terrain training aid resulted from a joint effort by flight crew training instructor pilots, human factors engineering, and aerodynamics engineering.

Answer the questions.

1. Why has human error become a major concern in maintenance practices and air traffic management?

2. Why do Boeing human factors professionals work with engineers, pilots and mechanics?

3. Why has the term “human factor” grown increasingly popular?

4. Why is a sound scientific basis so necessary?

5. What does flight crew communication rely on?

6. Why will flight crews be expected to assume much larger roles in route planning and metering for approaches in the future?

7. What can you say about the effect of uplink message formats on pilot comprehension in Boeing aircraft?

8. What has Boeing developed to help to understand the errors?

9. Error management. How do you understand it?

10. What does a trained investigator interview the flight crew to do?

11. What has the Boeing maintenance human factors provided?

12. What are three tools which assist in managing error?

13. What does crew information requirements analysis provide?

14. What does the analysis help Boeing?

15. Why are training aids so important?

Human Factor and Aviation Safety Problems

(Lessons learned from accident reviews)

by Jose Luis Garcia

As you all know, safety, aviation and human factors are closely related. I am not revealing anything new there. However, the review of any accident provides good material for reflection. I hope you enjoy reviewing the following cases as much as I have. Many of them engaged me directly with my target career, human factors and aviation. Perhaps you will find them relevant as well.

Historically, 70 percent of commercial jet accidents involved humans (Boeing 2004), in one form or another. In the early years of aviation, technical defects were the main cause of accidents. But as reliability improved, the human factor became the main factor.

Some say human error is the primary factor in up to 80 to 90 percent of the cases. However, aviation accidents often involve more than one cause, such as system complexity, poor human-machine interface, inappropriate work organization, awkward work procedures, altered communication between pilot and controllers, or loss of situational awareness. We should not place blame on the human operator alone, but rather to a combination of factors in a highly complex context.

The best way to understand the human factors of the aviation world, and how they can be applied, is to review some of the big accidents that have occurred. We will find there the "Aha!" The analysis of two of these accidents motivated me to pursue deeper human factors education: the accident at Los Rodeos airport in Tenerife (Spain) in 1977, where two B747 (from KLM and Pan Am) collided on the runway; and the accident of Cali (Colombia) in 1995, where an American Airlines B757 crashed into the terrain. Each aviation accident provides myriad lessons to learn, but those two are especially relevant, in my opinion.