The First Reason: Equipment Malfunctions
Companies pay little attention to technologies on board and make unreliable vessels with malfunctions. They also often ignore problems during the inspection and do not modify the devices. Some aviation companies intentionally covered malfunctions of engineering construction by referring to them as typical side-effects of daily operations (Stemn et al., 2018). According to a study by Wiegmann and Shappell (2017), the airline operating for less than three years is responsible for the downing of ValuJet Flight 592. The cause of the incident is improperly stored and labeled hazardous cargo. In pursuit of profit and popularity, companies ignore safety during transportation. When companies neglect the security of their aircraft, they impose a huge danger on all clients of these airlines.
The Second Reason: Ineffective Aviation Management
Aviation management includes managing scheduling operations of the department and ensuring the maintenance of workers’ conditions and safety are executed satisfactorily. One of the most common reasons for incidents to occur in the first place is worker fatigue. The crew makes irrevocable mistakes due to slower reactions caused by the body’s exhaustion, impaired concentration, and poor decision-making. (Bendak and Rashid, 2020). It proves that aviation firms do not take care of their crews.
During the first hour of Air India Express Flight 812, Mangalore, India, the captain did not record a conversation between the two pilots. The reason is that he “was asleep with intermittent sound of snoring, deep breathing and by the end, the sound of clearing throat and coughing could be heard (Biswas, 2017, p.587).” It resulted in the loss of 152 passengers and six aircraft crew.
According to Bendak and Rashid (2020), the leading causes of unsafe human actions on board airplanes are lack of sleep and deterioration of workers’ health. The companies do not provide healthy conditions to their workers. It results in the body’s exhaustion and increases pilots’ stress levels. Pilots who do not have enough time to recover after flights may fall asleep at the most important moment, causing potential danger to the whole aircraft. One such example is Flight 812, as mentioned above. Therefore, the company needs to help its employees by adjusting suitable schedules and giving them time to recover from long-haul travel.
The Third Reason: Poor Selection Process and Lack of Professionals
Pilots who operate an aircraft must be highly professional with the qualities of flexibility in emergency situations, courage, and possession of narrow knowledge. Tragedies when pilots are to blame only indicate that they are poorly trained. They are not strictly selected and do not receive additional knowledge to improve their skills.
Situational awareness (SA) is the perception and ability to connect decisions made during flights to their consequences. It is a soft skill important in high-risk jobs because it helps to eliminate the existing danger.
The tragic incident incorporating the loss of situational awareness was the American Airlines flight 965 in Cali, Columbia, in 1995. The experienced pilots on board entered the incorrect data into the flight management system, causing an unintentional collision with the mountain (Kelly & Efthymiou, 2019). The reason for this error was panic caused by minor problems with data on the aircraft.
Aviation agencies should train all pilots to react quickly in urgent cases without panicking. All candidates should prove their stress resistance to become a pilot. They should constantly pass clarification approvals and courses to understand the equipment and all aircraft mechanisms better.
Poor Dissemination of Accidents
Poor dissemination of aviation accidents creates a specific pattern of accidents that happen many times (Jung et al., 2020). People should be aware of possible dangers and catastrophes to recognize the possible preventative methods.
The main problem of the aviation industry in today’s world is that only large-scale incidents that become known and disseminated using general information are usually investigated. Instead, aviation companies do not take into account minor problems. Thus, very often, the employees and companies of this service can neglect many things, which can lead to fatal situations in the future.
Failing Aviation Companies
The companies that become reasons for fatalities usually stop their work because of ethical issues and society’s disapproval. Even though there have been several incidents, the aviation industry keeps improving its systems, especially the ones that supply oxygen. In this way, the sector’s development takes place based on past mistakes that allow for improvement in the aviation system. Despite its active development, the aviation industry has much negativity.
Summary
Aviation is one industry that keeps improving every year. It became a part of mundane life, providing fast worldwide trade and tourism by transporting people and goods worldwide. The only unresolved problem is safety on aircraft boards because of repetitive aviation accidents. The aviation industry experiences fatalities with repeating patterns due to poor aviation management decisions, malfunctions of technologies, and a lack of professionals.
Aviation is highly dependent on technologies and people controlling these technologies. Technologies and equipment constitute a significant part of aviation. Equipment malfunctions are the main reason why the same incidents happen again. Undetected defects can potentially cause heavy damage to the engine or aircraft, resulting in more fatalities (Aust & Pons, 2019). The recent system disparities determined that 78% of accidents happen due to design and technical interface faults (Jung et al., 2020). Therefore, the best way to fight such incidents is to evaluate the condition of airplanes with borescopes more thoroughly before every flight to prevent and mitigate undesired events. Compliance with all safety issues is a necessary part of the aviation industry. The safety of flights and the workers should be a priority for companies. In this way, the number of deaths due to neglecting elementary rules reduces the observance of legal norms (Aust & Pons, 2019). An essential stage in forming security is the precise control of minor malfunctions in the operating systems.
Poor aviation management influences human factors’ role in the fatalities. When companies fail to successfully manage operations and set comfortable and thoughtful flights for pilots, their crew suffers from these decisions the most because they lose sleep, concentration, and effective decision-making. For example, researchers identify distraction, complacency, and fatigue experienced by the flight crew as the main preconditions of unsafe flight. Pilots experience fatigue and various mental health instabilities due to disrupting the sleeping cycle when changing time zones (Bendack & Rashid, 2020). Another human factor affecting aviation incidents is panic and behavioral changes during problematic flights. Historically, 75% of all fatalities are attributed to pilot error (Kelly & Efthymiou, 2019).
To set the right attitude for the employee from the very beginning, he must go through a strict selection process to be ready for all dangers and problems on board the aircraft. Tragedies very often happen due to the fact that the pilot is not highly professional and ready to respond boldly and decisively in emergency situations. Sometimes, pilots lose situational awareness, which is responsible for predicting the factors that affect aircraft and coping with its consequences. Especially during an unintentional collision with the terrain, the flight crew is the ones responsible for the lives of people because the aircraft is entirely under their control. One example is American Airlines flight 965 in Cali in 1995 when pilots confused data from the flight management system and hit the mountain. The loss of sensational awareness occurred because of conflicting information, inadequate planning, and weather conditions. Relying more on automation is also problematic since it contributes to the pilot losing aircraft system knowledge as time passes. Thus, it is worth selecting pilots based on stress resistance so they do not become the main culprits in adverse situations.
Poor dissemination of aviation accidents contributes to the reoccurrence of incidence within this industry (Jung et al., 2020). Aviation incidents with only popular sensational stories posted on the networks become the most investigated. However, there are more minor catastrophes involving airplane damage where the core prevented the loss of lives. These cases also need to be voiced to attract more attention. When people are aware of possible dangers they face while traveling by plane, they also recognize the possible preventative methods. Knowledge deficiencies lead to poor onboard management decisions and equipment malfunctions.
Loss of control, runway excursion, controlled flight into terrain, runway incursion, airborne conflict, ground handling, and fire lead to the loss of numerous lives during aircraft flights. If aviation companies stop neglecting technical issues and improve crew qualifications, pilots’ stress levels, and minor incidents, the frequency of all aviation incidents will significantly decrease.
References
Aust, J. and Pons, D. (2019) Bowtie methodology for risk analysis of visual borescope inspection during aircraft engine maintenance, Aerospace, 6(10), 110.
Bendak, S. and Rashid, H. S. (2020) Fatigue in aviation: A systematic review of the literature, International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 76, 102928.
Biswas, M. (2017) Mangalore Air Disaster: Learning for Organizational Leadership. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 52(4), 585–596.
Jung, S., Woo, J. and Kang, C (2020). Analysis of severe industrial accidents caused by hazardous chemicals in South Korea from January 2008 to June 2018. Safety Science, 124.
Kelly, D. and Efthymiou, M. (2019) An analysis of human factors in fifty controlled flight into terrain aviation accidents from 2007 to 2017, Journal of safety research, 69, 155-165.
Stemn, E. et al. (2018) Failure to learn from safety incidents: Status, challenges and opportunities, Safety science, 101, 313-325.
Wiegmann, D. A. and Shappell, S. A. (2017) A human error approach to aviation accident analysis: The human factors analysis and classification system. Routledge.