Quantifying pilot contribution to flight safety for normal and non-normal airline operations

Abstract

Accident statistics cite the flight crew as a causal factor in over 60% of accidents involving transport category airplanes. Yet, a well-trained and wellqualified pilot is acknowledged as the critical center point of aircraft systems safety and an integral safety component of the entire commercial aviation system. No data currently exists that quantifies the contribution of the flight crew in this role. Neither does data exist for how often the flight crew handles non-normal procedures or system failures on a daily basis in the National Airspace System. A pilot-in-the-loop high fidelity motion simulation study was conducted by the NASA Langley Research Center in partnership with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to evaluate the pilot's contribution to flight safety during normal flight and in response to aircraft system failures. Eighteen crews flew various normal and non-normal procedures over a two-day period and their actions were recorded in response to failures. To quantify the human's contribution, crew complement was used as the experiment independent variable in a betweensubjects design. Pilot actions and performance when one of the flight crew was impaired were also recorded for comparison against the nominal twocrew operations. This paper details a portion of the results of this study.

An assessment of reduced crew and single pilot operations in commercial transport aircraft operations

“…This paper provides an evaluation of crew configuration influence across the entire array of normal and non-normal operations using a current-day flight deck configuration during two-crew, reduced crew, and single pilot operations. Specific review of each non-normal and its specific effects and influences are contained in [29,30,31,32,33].…”

A Novel Automated Electronic Checklist for Non-Normal Event Resolution Tasks

“…Following the above discussion, the proposed AECL design delivers promising results. First, significant time reductions in checklist completion times (net time to completion) and decision-making were found, which would allow the pilot to better meet non-normal event time pressure [2] and deal with higher troubleshooting times found for SPO conditions [14]. Moreover, comparable experienced workload and situation awareness was observed, but the measurements were realised within a shorter time window.…”

“…As the scenario is set up, the question is whether it is authorised to conduct an RNAV approach with the incurred failures and land safely on the runway. Other literature indicates that with the same failure, RNAV approaches are no longer approved when AC transfer bus 1 and the APU are inoperative [14]. However, as per the operating manuals for some of the airline companies of which participants took part in the experiment, the minimum RNAV requirements were not violated.…”

Quantifying Pilot Contribution to Flight Safety During Hydraulic Systems Failure

“…This same planned route of flight was used for the entire two days of data collection. Weather and visibility were designed to affect any diversion decisions [5].…”