Abstract
The lack of experience is causing aviation mishaps in the military. Skybrary (n.d.) views the lack of knowledge as a precondition or undesired condition that might cause accidents. Moreover, the Federal Aviation Administration’s (2014) report shows that less experienced specialists show a higher risk of mistakes and contribute to the emergence of potentially risky situations. Human factors pose a severe threat to the safety of flight.
The following questions will determine if there is a correlation between a lack of experience and mishaps. What is the correlation between the lack of experience and aviation mishaps in the military? Will the mishap rates be reduced with additional training? How often is training being conducted, and what is the effectiveness of training? Do more experienced personnel conducting training make an impact?
The quantitative research method will determine if there is a correlation between the lack of experience and aviation mishaps in the military. Data collection will consist of previous and current mishap rates. Also, data collection of previous and current training times will be needed, in addition to the instructor’s experience. The training offered for maintenance crews is the dependent variable in the study, while the mishap rate is the independent one. The changes in the number of accidents will evidence whether the selected method is effective in resolving the problem or not.
Summary
Safety and quality practices are a matter of concern in military aviation. Researchers link the mishaps in the sector to the level of training the professionals undergo to equip them with the required knowledge. In 2018 alone, more people died from crushes caused by these mistakes than those who died in the war in Afghanistan (Malkasian, 2021). The Pentagon and the military leaders are responsible for the safety of these front-line workers. The causes of the mishaps must be researched and identified if the fatalities of these unsung heroes are to be reduced. By first understanding these causalities, the top officials can know which policies are best to adopt. Military aviation officials have a role in making researchers understand what they believe are the main causes of these mishaps. Military commanders should allow the military aircraft crew to share their insights with researchers and other stakeholders since that would lead to insights capable of making their work easier.
Currently, most research done to identify the cause of aviation mishaps in the military is limited to rudimentary data, unable to capture emerging trends and patterns. This is contributed by over-reliance on software data, which has in the past, failed to identify the root cause of aviation errors. For instance, data collected using a particular aviation program cannot identify the contribution of the experience of people who train the officials to mishap rates. Reliance on the wrong channel to collect data has resulted in military leaders making wrong decisions in managing the aviation industry (Ayiei, 2021). Instead of creating complex and often inaccurate models based on software information, it would be better for a study to be conducted where a simple Likert scale would be used to understand the aviation crew member’s opinions.
The current study used quantitative data analysis to understand how lack of experience relates to aviation mishaps in the military. Quantitative research is important because it improves understanding of social phenomena by producing objective data that can be easily communicated through statistics and numbers (Rashid & Sipahi, 2021). The research utilized the traditional hypothetico-deductive model, where a falsifiable proposition was used. The hypothesis for the study states, “There is no relationship between the mishaps experienced in military aviation to level of training.” This study utilized the correlational research design to investigate the research question where the level of experience of the professionals was the independent variable, and the rate of mishaps was the dependent variable.
This research will assist military commanders and key policymakers in making more informed decisions. The United States Air Force Safety Center (2020) instructs military commanders to know the common types of Mishaps and the best mitigation measures. By understanding the influence of various aspects on error, the officials can perform the responsibility assigned to them. They can develop action plans to offer the direction to be taken by all the stakeholders. They can also understand their impact on reducing accidents by comparing the number of mishaps in different periods. This study aimed to develop models that could be used as a reference point by stakeholders in the future, particularly when deciding on the level of training end experience that each expert should receive.
This study sought to answer the following research questions:
- Is there a correlation between lack of experience and aviation mishaps in the military? If yes, what is the type of correlation?
- Does training reduce the rate of aviation mishaps?
- How often is aviation training done in the U.S. military?
- What is the level of experience of the people who conducted the training?
Literature Review
This literature review will start by defining key terms associated with aviation mishaps according to various sources. Then, various studies and conclusions about the topic or related topics will be discussed. A military aviation myriad is used to confirm if a mishap has occurred. The myriad is defined as a series of decision algorithms where two conditions must be satisfied for an event to be acceptable as a mishap. First, the event must be capable of causing either death, injury, or damage to the property. Secondly, the event must not have been planned; thus, suicide-related accidents do not fit the definition. Mishaps that result in death, permanent disability, or loss of property worth more than $ 2 million are classified into class A. Those that lead to hospitalization of a person or damages less than $500,000 are put into class B of mishaps.
Recent technological advancements and improved system safety features have left human error the only significant cause of accidents in the aviation industry. Sant’Anna and Hilal (2021) suggest that the best way to reduce aviation accidents would be to minimize human error. In order to achieve low rate of calamities, the crew must be subjected to thorough training programs that meets their aviation needs. Furthermore, studies suggest that errors contribute 70% to 80% of all aviation accidents (Kharoufah et al., 2018; Sant’Anna & Hilal, 2021). Modern aviation theory is, for this reason, heavily involved in understanding how human factors like experience, understanding new technologies, and operational situations correlate to accidents (Havle & Kılıç, 2019). National Investigation Agencies tasked with identifying causes of fatal aviation accidents have put human errors at the start point of their investigations upon understanding the trend. In undertaking their mandate, the agencies seek to understand why the operator took a certain action at a particular time (Senders & Moray, 2020). Insights driven by such investigations are used to train pilots to act when faced with a particular challenge. The trained pilots, therefore, make better decisions and are less susceptible to such errors.
An increase in the number of military aircraft crashes has raised concerns about the Pentagon’s approach to ensuring safety. While the main cause of these recent crushes remains under investigation, concerns have been raised about the training and experience of those tasked with maintaining the crews (Havle & Kılıç, 2019). Critics say that the increase in accidents is contributed by, among other factors, lack of experience, poor training, and poor instructors’ experience. The Pentagon has been blamed for these accidents because of delaying budgets, thus reducing the availability of spare parts needed to keep the planes flying. This results in pilots having to sit down without flying and thus resulting in inexperience (Senders & Moray, 2020). The relationship between this inexperience and mishaps in the aviation industry is yet to be studied. This paper will conduct correlational research to find if inexperience contributes to mishaps in military aviation.
Military pilots differ from pilots for civilians as their work is more rigorous and relies heavily on human judgment than pre-set systems. Before a person is accepted to act as a military pilot, they must undergo various mental and physical fitness tests (Laukkala et al., 2021). This culture results in reduced health-related accidents in military aviation. However, other factors like inexperience, maintenance of airplanes, and communication-related issues remain relevant in recent aviation accidents (Chatzi, 2019). A study conducted in Germany showed that front-line pilots contributed to the majority of inaccuracies that led to accidents in human-crewed aircraft (Nitzschner et al., 2019). The same study showed that of the 33 airplanes that had accidents without a pilot, the most significant contributor to the accidents was technical issues. Therefore, it can be concluded that front-line military workers are more likely to contribute to accidents compared to those operating from a workstation.
The literature showing the relationship between the experience of the military crew and the mishap rate is relatively sparse. This scarcity is caused mainly by the data limitations and the research’s complexity. One of the few organizations to successfully collect data on the issue is the National Commission of Military Aviation Safety (NCMA), thanks to its experience and expertise. Data from the Commission shows that from 2013 to 2020, over 6000 military mishaps occurred during routine operations. These mishaps led to the damage of 186 aircraft and cost the U.S. Department of Defense $11.6 billion (NCMAS, 2020). Regardless of the rank or service, the commission discovered that aviation professionals had to deal with reduced flight hours, excess administrative work, decreased proficiency, and lack of funding.
The experience of military crews is expected to be inversely proportional to errors if other factors remain constant. All errors related to aviation, such as poor decision-making, inattentiveness, inappropriate handling of the wind, runway condition, and erroneous airplane kinetics, are correlated with the pilot’s experience. Therefore, aviation insurance agents have found the level of experience of a pilot to be useful when predicting the likelihood of an accident. Many aviation stakeholders measure the proficiency of an aviation expert based solely on their experience and ignore other variables. The Federal Aviation Administration (2014) measures a pilot’s proficiency based on physical skills to handle the plane and situational awareness when unexpected events occur. These measurements have not been conclusive since military pilots, technical staff, and other support workers show inconsistencies when it comes to safety despite their experience (Chatzi, 2019). The gap in whether the quality of training and level of experience determine the rate of mishaps has made this study necessary.
Research Methods
This study will investigate various human aspects that cause aviation mishaps. Quantitative research design is used to support or reject the hypothesis stated above. Both primary and secondary data will be collected and analyzed in this study. First, secondary data will be collected, where open-source data from the National Transportation and Safety Board and FAA will be collected from Kaggle, a free data website. The data set containing all mishaps will be downloaded in CSV or text format and analyzed using data analysis software like Python or R. Visualizations from these large datasets will be created for use by relevant stakeholders. The experts tasked with this role will be asked to ensure they have data for:
- The experience of the crew member
- Experience of their trainer
- The number of hours they spent training
- Their rating of the quality of training
- The regularity of their training
The primary data collection will add more data in areas where secondary information is scarce. The crew who caused accidents will be accessed separately to see if they had a limited level of experience in comparison to other workers. A four-point Likert scale will be used to gauge their experience level, with four representing very experienced and 1 representing no experience. Second the level of training of each military aviation crew member who caused an accident will be collected and compared with the statistics of the ones who did not cause accidents. The level of training will also be divided into four categories to represent the most trained and undertrained crew members. Different institutions will be researched based on how often they train their aviation workpeople. A comparison of data between institutions that conducted regular training and those that did not will be done. The respondents will be asked about their perception of the level and effectiveness of the training they have received as crew members. The trainers’ level of experience and expertise will be analyzed by giving the trainers a standard anonymous test to gauge their abilities.
Military officers who deal with aviation will also be requested to fill out a report where they will be asked various questions relating to mishaps. The collected results will be stored safely in a cloud computing platform. Evaluation of the reports will be done using various simple linear regression technics agreeable to its policy. Permission will have to be given from the military heads for the analysis. The information gathered in the database will contain no personal information about the report writers. The rank of the person who has filled out a particular report will also be ignored. Data collected through secondary means will be compared with that from the primary source to see if any discrepancies exist.
Possible Results
The study findings indicate a strong relationship between the mishaps and the level of experience. The military crew with less experience is more likely to cause accidents than those with adequate education in the field. Therefore, a direct positive correlation between the mishap rate and the level of experience of the crew members should be observed (Hulme et al., 2019). In addition, the analysis suggests that undertaking training reduces the number of mishaps. In the study, variables such as the time a person took training or the time between pilot flights will bring too much noise for such a hypothesis to be confirmed. Since the study will rely on data from the U.S., it is expected that the amount of training afforded to aviation persons will be limited. The same argument will also b made for the effectiveness of the training as limitations in funding, and the absence of practice sessions will make the respondents view their training as ineffective. The experience of the trainers will also be expected to bring no impact on the rate of mishaps as all trainers follow a standardized manual to train the aviation crew.
Discussion
The outcomes from this study should provide insight for relevant stakeholders to understand the most crucial factors in reducing aviation-related accidents in the military. The expected results of this research should indicate a correlation between the experience of military crew members and the rate of aviation mishaps. However, unlike conventional wisdom, training would have no significant impact unless combined with other key factors (Wahl & Kongsvik, 2018). One of the key factors would be the regularity of the pilots’ training, as constant training will lead to competency. The trainer’s experience would also not greatly impact the reduction of accidents as long as the training is effective.
The number of errors in the military in this research will be expected to fall with an increase in the level of experience of the military personally up to a point where the curve would flatten. This is in line with previous studies, which show that human error and mishaps can only be reduced but cannot be lowered to zero (Sensers & Moral, 2020). Based on the findings of many scholars, the study could prove that training has to be conducted simultaneously with other practices, such as training if it is to yield any favorable outcome. The results might contrast the findings of Wahl and Kongsvik (2018), who found that training is not correlated to reduced aviation accidents. However, Wahl and Kongsvik (2018) could argue that their research was conducted on commercial aircraft, while this study will deal with military aviation machines. The results of this study could suggest that the trainer’s level of experience is not a significant variable in mishaps. However, based on other related studies, a more plausible argument would be that other factors override the effect of the instructor’s experience with mishaps.
The findings of this study will build on the existing evidence that the biggest cause of accidents in the aviation industry is human error. The data collected through Kaggle will be expected to prove that human error accidents cause around 75% of aviation accidents (Kharoufah et al., 2018; Sant’Anna & Hilal, 2021; Hulme et al., 2019). This observation can possibly have significant implications for aviation commanders who have to set up automated aviation units to help limit unavoidable human error. However, the theory brought up by certain critics that educators have to be retrained will be proved baseless by the results obtained in the research. This research is unique because while other studies have focused on reducing accidents and mishaps in the general aviation industry, this study focused only on human factors contributing to mishaps in the military.
Even the best studies have limitations, and this research will not differ. The reliability of the open-source data collected from Kaggle will be under question, putting the study at risk of reaching flawed conclusions. Likewise, it will be hard for the researchers to know if experience, training, or any variable under discussion was the main source or if there was a silent contributor. The methodological choices for this study will also be severely limited by the secretive culture cultivated by military workers. Thus, some data will be held confidential by the officers, making the results not to be conclusive. Based on the results of this study, military officials should ensure the experience of the aviation experts is given top priority if mishaps are to be mitigated. Further research should be done on the topic where a mixed method approach that uses both qualitative and quantitative research is done. Qualitative research that uses a grounded theory approach and inductive reasoning would help understand the problem from the victim’s perspective.
References
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