Graham Braithwaite

Australian aviation safety — observations from the ‘lucky’ country

This paper examines the reasons behind Australia’s good record for commercial jet aircraft operations. The results indicate a complex system of factors ranging from the anecdotal theories on weather, terrain, traffic density and luck together with deeper human factors issues such as the influence of culture at national, industry and organisational levels and the influence of key historical events and personalities. This paper illustrates how these inputs have interacted with each other and the effect this has on the level of risk acceptability within Australian aviation. It also highlights the commonly held perceptions of what makes Australian commercial aviation safe and how these support or contradict the results of scientific case study research into the area. The perceptions of future threats are also highlighted along with some suggestions for how other systems can learn from the Australian experience.

Perceptions of safety and offshore helicopter travel

Purpose – UK oil and gas producers through unilateral action and consensus have been ultimately responsible for many key safety improvements in global helicopter services. With production assets no longer concentrated in the hands of a few major operators, the question is whether this leadership role can be assured in the future. This paper aims to summarise doctoral research that examined the economics of safety in the offshore helicopter industry.Design/methodology/approach – The offshore helicopter industry has particular characteristics, including: greater levels of safety training and choice is severely limited. A carefully structured questionnaire was presented to a sample of offshore helicopter passengers, and the responses analysed in depth.Findings – Shifts in perceptions of safety risk are predictable, and potentially measurable, and translate into demands for action based on a mechanism of individual choice. It is then the cumulative effects of any shift in individual choices that determine the...

Investigating the investigations: a retrospective study in the aviation maintenance error causation

In this paper, the impact of human reliability on aviation maintenance safety is investigated. Its purpose is to explore the actual mechanisms of maintenance errors initialization and propagation and hence to identify requisite characteristics for future solutions. Aviation maintenance errors account for between 12 and 15% of the global aviation accidents initiators, and this proportion rises to 23% when serious incidents are included. A wider global exercise of aviation maintenance safety improvement activities is consequently required. The current research applies the human error risk management in engineering systems (HERMES) methodology that conceptualizes two main streams of study: a retrospective investigation into human errors within aviation maintenance contexts, which is the main subject of this paper, and an ensuing prospective innovation of new tools that work to prevent future errors occurring. An extended fresh inquiry and a deeper data-mining process were concomitantly conducted. A new model signifying the initiation, accumulation, and propagation of crucial maintenance human errors within aviation maintenance organizations is thus introduced. Rotorcrafts are taken as a focal case study due to the high criticality naturally associated with their structural and operational characteristics.

Eradicating root causes of aviation maintenance errors: introducing the AMMP

This is the second of two papers in the area of aviation maintenance safety enhancement utilizing human error risk management in engineering systems methodology. The first focused on the retrospective analysis of human error in aircraft maintenance, where the impact of human reliability on aviation maintenance safety was investigated. The purpose was to explore the actual mechanisms of maintenance errors initialization and propagation, with the aim of identifying requisite characteristics for future solutions. This second part focuses on a prospective approach to proactive safety techniques that can be applied to the field. It builds on the findings from the previous work and introduces a proposed Aviation Maintenance Monitoring Process (AMMP); an integrated process that is to be collectively implemented by industry to proactively monitor existence of human error causal factors. These factors are typically pre-initiated during design practices, manufacturing processes, or at later stages due to organizational, individuals, or workplace conditions within maintenance, repair, and overhaul organizations (MRO). As a result, such causal factors can be gradually eliminated. This generic AMMP is based on user software built applying the fuzzy Analytic Network Process (fuzzy ANP) theory, with a database of a communal total of 870 assessment criteria designed within the software. The full process is validated practically in real world within industry.

Aviation rescue and firefighting in Australia — is it protecting the customer?

Aviation is an extremely safe transport mode, yet the accident rate for commercial jet aircraft operations has not changed since the early 1970s. In spite of this, changes within the Australian aviation safety system are allowing safety margins to be reduced in areas such as aviation rescue and firefighting (ARFF). In the name of economic rationalisation, the provision of secondary safety measures such as ARFF has been reduced with the argument of no unacceptable increase in risk. However, with numerous safety improvements still to be adopted following earlier aircraft fires, the decisions on what constitutes acceptable risk in this area seem to be fallible. This paper examines the nature of the risk and the perceptions of the customers of the safety system; the travelling public. Data collected through a survey of 1025 people demonstrates a general lack of awareness about how many airports are covered by ARFF services and what size of aircraft is covered. Data also point towards an apparent willingness to pay extra to assure such facilities are provided.

The Investigation Human-Computer Interaction on Multiple Remote Tower Operations

The aim of current research is to develop an effective human-computer interaction framework for multiple remote tower operations. Five subject-matter experts familiar with multiple remote tower operations and human performance participated in current research. The Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) method is used to break down activities, scenarios, and tasks into single separate operations. The step by step breakdown of multiple remote tower operations included ATCO’s operational behaviors involving human-computer interaction such as interaction with EFS, OTW, RDP, and IDP during task performance were noted. Designing and managing human-computer interactions require an understanding of the principles of cognitive systems, allocation of functions and team adaptation between human operators and computer interactions. It is a holistic approach which considers distributed cognition coordination to rapidly changing situations. The human-centred design of multiple remote tower operations shall be based on a strategic, collaborative and automated concept of operations, as the associated high performance of remote tower systems in conflict detection and resolution has the potential to increase both airspace efficiency and the safety of aviation. The focus is on the human performance associated with new technology in the RTC and the supported tools used by an Air Traffic Control Officer, to ensure that these are used safely and efficiently to control aircraft both remotely and for multiple airports. The advanced technology did provide sufficient technical supports to one ATCO performing a task originally designed to be performed by several ATCOs, however, the application of this new technology also induced huge workload on the single ATCO.

The evaluation of pilot’s situational awareness during mode changes on flight mode annunciators

Current research investigates automation feedback design compared with a potential design solution that may increase pilot’s situation awareness of the Flight Mode Annunciators (FMAs) to reduce pilot workload and improve human-automation coordination. The research tools include an Eye Tracker and B747 flight simulator. This research evaluated two types of FMAs; a proposed glareshield mounted FMAs against the baseline FMA design mounted on the Primary Flight Display using an objective eye tracker. There are 19 participants including professional and private pilots and aerospace engineers. The results suggest that proposed glareshield design is the better design compared with the baseline design which demonstrated larger mean pupil sizes related to the higher workload. A design solution was proposed that moved the FMAs to a MCP position, taking into account EASA and FAA design guidance, as well as several design principles including positioning to increase salience and the proximity compatibility principle. The results of the experiment found that FMAs on the MCP could increase pilot SA and reduced the mean fixation duration compared to the PFD position. Although the study used a small sample size, it demonstrates the value of further research to evaluate the proposed design.

Human-Centered Design of Flight Mode Annunciation for Instantaneous Mode Awareness

Since the early days of aviation, aircraft design engineers have been using automation to reduce pilot workload and enhance flight safety. While the basic automated systems performed quite simple tasks such as to hold altitude or heading, modern flight guidance and control systems typically have over 20 different modes of operation. The basic philosophy of flight mode annunciation however, did hardly change. It is therefore not surprising that flight crews encounter more and more difficulties to comprehend the active flight mode. In current designs, the active flight mode is typically shown on top of the primary flight display (PFD). A new flight mode annunciation (FMA) concept was investigated using a flight simulator in conjunction with eye-tracking analysis and a questionnaire. The experiment involved 20 participants, aged between 22 and 47 years (M = 27.7, SD = 7). Thereof 12 were qualified pilots and 8 were aerospace engineering professionals. Flight experience reached from 0 to 11000 h (M = 946, SD = 2567). The study showed that the modified display style caused a significant decrease of fixation duration and subjective workload.

Human Performance Assessment of Multiple Remote Tower Operations Simultaneous Take-Off and Landing at Two Airports

Remote Airport Traffic Control Centre describes the goal of providing aerodrome control service at more than one airport from a geographically separated remote control centre. The technology is applicable to all airports, regardless of size or movement rate, in some cases potentially as a primary tower and in others as a fully functioning contingency or backup system. The innovative concept of multiple remote tower operations (MRTO) can maximize cost savings by using advanced technologies at the remote tower working positions, which permits less controllers to accomplish the same quantity and quality of air traffic management tasks at an airport. The aim of this research is to assess human performance on multiple remote tower operations by using the Human Error Template (HET). The results of this research demonstrate that advanced technology based on human-centered design has improved ATCO’s performance in monitoring and controlling more aircraft from two different airports. OTW design permits the adjustment of the size of view of the selected airports (100%, 75%, 50% or 25%) based on ATCO’s preference, but they are also able to zoom-in by PTZ to enhance visual searching. Furthermore, OTW allows different colors to distinguish different airports, green for Cork and red for Shannon, further increasing ATCO’s situation awareness to which airport he/she is engaging. The EFS system integrates aircraft strip information with the map of runway and taxiway, providing the ATCO a clear picture of the locations of the moving targets. This is a very effective design to prevent runway incursions. The information presented by the RDP can facilitate ATCO predicting the flow of traffic and landing time at each airport, thereby facilitating enhanced decision making in respect of simultaneous movements at both airports. These new technology enhancements significantly increase ATCO task performance and in conjunction with a good human centered design the ATCO’s decision making capability can also be enhanced.

The impact of alerting designs on air traffic controller’s eye movement patterns and situation awareness

Abstract This research investigated controller’ situation awareness by comparing COOPANS’s acoustic alerts with newly designed semantic alerts. The results demonstrate that ATCOs’ visual scan patterns had significant differences between acoustic and semantic designs. ATCOs established different eye movement patterns on fixations number, fixation duration and saccade velocity. Effective decision support systems require human-centered design with effective stimuli to direct ATCO’s attention to critical events. It is necessary to provide ATCOs with specific alerting information to reflect the nature of the critical situation in order to minimise the side effects of startle and inattentional deafness. Consequently, the design of a semantic alert can significantly reduce ATCOs’ response time, therefore providing valuable extra time in a time-limited situation to formulate and execute resolution strategies in critical air safety events. The findings of this research indicate that the context-specified design of semantic alerts could improve ATCO’s situational awareness and significantly reduce response time in the event of Short Term Conflict Alert (STCA) activation which alerts to two aircraft having less than the required lateral or vertical separation. Practitioner Summary: Eye movements are closely linked with visual attention and can be analysed to explore shifting attention whilst performing monitoring tasks. This research has found that context-specific designed semantic alerts facilitated improved ATCO cognitive processing by integrating visual and auditory resources. Semantic designs have been demonstrated to be superior to acoustic design by directing the operator’s attention more quickly to critical situations.Abbreviations: APW: area proximity warning; ASRS: aviation safety reporting system; ATC: air traffic control; ATCO: air traffic controller; ATM: air traffic management; COOPANS: cooperation between air navigation service providers; HCI: human-computer interaction; IAA: irish aviation authority; MSAW: minimum safe altitude warning; MTCD: medium-term conflict detection; SA: situation awareness; STCA: short term conflict alert; TP: trajectory prediction