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Crew resource management or cockpit resource management (CRM) is a set of training procedures for use in environments where human error can have devastating effects. CRM is primarily used for improving aviation safety and focuses on interpersonal communication, leadership, and decision making in aircraft cockpits. Its founder is David Beaty, a former Royal Air Force and a BOAC pilot who wrote "The Human Factor in Aircraft Accidents" (1969). Despite the considerable development of electronic aids since then, many principles he developed continue to prove effective.
In the field of human factors and ergonomics, human reliability is the probability that a human performs a task to a sufficient standard. Reliability of humans can be affected by many factors such as age, physical health, mental state, attitude, emotions, personal propensity for certain mistakes, and cognitive biases.
Pilot error generally refers to an accident in which an action or decision made by the pilot was the cause or a contributing factor that led to the accident, but also includes the pilot's failure to make a correct decision or take proper action. Errors are intentional actions that fail to achieve their intended outcomes. The Chicago Convention defines the term "accident" as "an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft [...] in which [...] a person is fatally or seriously injured [...] except when the injuries are [...] inflicted by other persons." Hence the definition of "pilot error" does not include deliberate crashing.
Situational awareness or situation awareness (SA) is the understanding of an environment, its elements, and how it changes with respect to time or other factors. Situational awareness is important for effective decision making in many environments. It is formally defined as:
“the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future”.
Competence is the set of demonstrable characteristics and skills that enable and improve the efficiency or performance of a job. Competency is a series of knowledge, abilities, skills, experiences and behaviors, which leads to effective performance in an individual's activities. Competency is measurable and can be developed through training.
A near miss, near death, near hit, close call is an unplanned event that has the potential to cause, but does not actually result in human injury, environmental or equipment damage, or an interruption to normal operation.
Single-pilot resource management (SRM) is defined as the art and science of managing all the resources available to a single-pilot to ensure that the successful outcome of the flight is never in doubt. SRM includes the concepts of Aeronautical Decision Making (ADM), Risk Management (RM), Task Management (TM), Automation Management (AM), Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) Awareness, and Situational Awareness (SA). SRM training helps the pilot maintain situational awareness by managing the automation and associated aircraft control and navigation tasks. This enables the pilot to accurately assess and manage risk and make accurate and timely decisions.
In the United States, a Designated Pilot Evaluator (DPE) is a senior pilot who examines applicants for a Pilot Certificate on behalf of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The DPE must check applicants’ qualifications, conduct an oral test of their mental skills and judgment, and perform a practical test in flight.
Fatigue is a major human factors issue in aviation safety. The Fatigue Avoidance Scheduling Tool (FAST) was developed by the United States Air Force in 2000–2001 to address the problem of aircrew fatigue in aircrew flight scheduling. FAST is a Windows program that allows scientists, planners and schedulers to quantify the effects of various work-rest schedules on human performance. It allows work and sleep data entry in graphic, symbolic (grid) and text formats. The graphic input-output display shows cognitive performance effectiveness as a function of time. An upper green area on the graph ends at the time for normal sleep, 90% effectiveness. The goal of the planner or scheduler is to keep performance effectiveness at or above 90% by manipulating the timing and lengths of work and rest periods. A work schedule is entered as red bands on the time line. Sleep periods are entered as blue bands across the time line, below the red bands.
Human factors are the physical or cognitive properties of individuals, or social behavior which is specific to humans, and influence functioning of technological systems as well as human-environment equilibria. The safety of underwater diving operations can be improved by reducing the frequency of human error and the consequences when it does occur. Human error can be defined as an individual's deviation from acceptable or desirable practice which culminates in undesirable or unexpected results.
Dive safety is primarily a function of four factors: the environment, equipment, individual diver performance and dive team performance. The water is a harsh and alien environment which can impose severe physical and psychological stress on a diver. The remaining factors must be controlled and coordinated so the diver can overcome the stresses imposed by the underwater environment and work safely. Diving equipment is crucial because it provides life support to the diver, but the majority of dive accidents are caused by individual diver panic and an associated degradation of the individual diver's performance. - M.A. Blumenberg, 1996
Maritime resource management (MRM) or bridge resource management (BRM) is a set of human factors and soft skills training aimed at the maritime industry. The MRM training programme was launched in 1993 – at that time under the name bridge resource management – and aims at preventing accidents at sea caused by human error.
Automation bias is the propensity for humans to favor suggestions from automated decision-making systems and to ignore contradictory information made without automation, even if it is correct. Automation bias stems from the social psychology literature that found a bias in human-human interaction that showed that people assign more positive evaluations to decisions made by humans than to a neutral object. The same type of positivity bias has been found for human-automation interaction, where the automated decisions are rated more positively than neutral. This has become a growing problem for decision making as intensive care units, nuclear power plants, and aircraft cockpits have increasingly integrated computerized system monitors and decision aids to mostly factor out possible human error. Errors of automation bias tend to occur when decision-making is dependent on computers or other automated aids and the human is in an observatory role but able to make decisions. Examples of automation bias range from urgent matters like flying a plane on automatic pilot to such mundane matters as the use of spell-checking programs.
In aviation safety, threat and error management (TEM) is an overarching safety management approach that assumes that pilots will naturally make mistakes and encounter risky situations during flight operations. Rather than try to avoid these threats and errors, its primary focus is on teaching pilots to manage these issues so they do not impair safety. Its goal is to maintain safety margins by training pilots and flight crews to detect and respond to events that are likely to cause damage (threats) as well as mistakes that are most likely to be made (errors) during flight operations.
Aviation accident analysis is performed to determine the cause of errors once an accident has happened. In the modern aviation industry, it is also used to analyze a database of past accidents in order to prevent an accident from happening. Many models have been used not only for the accident investigation but also for educational purpose.
In aviation, a source of stress that comes from the environment is known as an environmental stressor. Stress is defined as a situation, variable, or circumstance that interrupts the normal functioning of an individual and, most of the time, causes a threat. It can be related not only to mental health, but also to physical health.
Pilot decision making, also known as aeronautical decision making (ADM), is a process that aviators perform to effectively handle troublesome situations that are encountered. Pilot decision-making is applied in almost every stage of the flight as it considers weather, air spaces, airport conditions, estimated time of arrival and so forth. During the flight, employers pressure pilots regarding time and fuel restrictions since a pilots’ performance directly affects the company’s revenue and brand image. This pressure often hinders a pilot's decision-making process leading to dangerous situations as 50% to 90% of aviation accidents are the result of pilot error.
Culture can affect aviation safety through its effect on how the flight crew deals with difficult situations; cultures with lower power distances and higher levels of individuality can result in better aviation safety outcomes. In higher power cultures subordinates are less likely to question their superiors. The crash of Korean Air Flight 801 in 1997 was attributed to the pilot's decision to land despite the junior officer's disagreement, while the crash of Avianca Flight 052 was caused by the failure to communicate critical low-fuel data between pilots and controllers, and by the failure of the controllers to ask the pilots if they were declaring an emergency and assist the pilots in landing the aircraft. The crashes have been blamed on aspects of the national cultures of the crews.
Stress in the aviation industry is a common phenomenon composed of three sources: physiological stressors, psychological stressors, and environmental stressors. Professional pilots can experience stress in flight, on the ground during work-related activities, and during personal time because of the influence of their occupation. An airline pilot can be an extremely stressful job due to the workload, responsibilities and safety of the thousands of passengers they transport around the world. Chronic levels of stress can negatively impact one's health, job performance and cognitive functioning. Being exposed to stress does not always negatively influence humans because it can motivate people to improve and help them adapt to a new environment. Unfortunate accidents start to occur when a pilot is under excessive stress, as it dramatically affects his or her physical, emotional, and mental conditions. Stress "jeopardizes decision-making relevance and cognitive functioning" and it is a prominent cause of pilot error. Being a pilot is considered a unique job that requires managing high workloads and good psychological and physical health. Unlike the other professional jobs, pilots are considered to be highly affected by stress levels. One study states that 70% of surgeons agreed that stress and fatigue don't impact their performance level, while only 26% of pilots denied that stress influences their performance. Pilots themselves realize how powerful stress can be, and yet many accidents and incidents continues to occur and have occurred, such as Asiana Airlines Flight 214, American Airlines Flight 1420, and Polish Air Force Tu-154.
In aviation, the SHELL model is a conceptual model of human factors that helps to clarify the location and cause of human error within an aviation environment.
The Advanced Qualification Program (AQP) is the alternate pilot qualification method by the Federal Aviation Administration. AQP is a voluntary program by pilots to meet up to the ‘traditional’ regulatory requirements. AQP serves as a means of compliance to qualify, train, and certify the competence of pilots flight attendants and competence of pilots, flight attendants and dispatchers.
References
- ↑ Avermaete, van. "NOTECHS: Non-technical skill evaluation in JAR-FCL" (PDF).
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ↑ Helmreich, R.L., & Foushee (1993). Why crew resource management? Empirical and theoretical bases of human factors training in aviation. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. pp. 3–45.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ Warton, Chris (2012). "Pilot Training Evaluation Techniques".
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ↑ Nagel, D.C (1988). Human error in aviation operations. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. pp. 263–303.
- ↑ Smith, Ruffell (1979). A Simulator study of the interaction of pilot workload with errors, vigilance and decisions. Moffett Field, CA: NASA-Ames Research Center.
- ↑ Sexton, B.J.; Helmreich, R.L. (2000). Analyzing cockpit communication: the links between language, performance, error, and workload (5 ed.). pp. 63–68.
- ↑ Jim Dow; Susan Martin (2003). "Flight Competency by Design: A Qualitative Shift" (PDF). Transport Canada. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
- ↑ Flin, Rhona (2003). "Development of the NOTECHS (non-technical skills) system for assessing pilots' CRM skills" (PDF).
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ↑ "Aviation Safety Letter" (PDF). Transport Canada. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
- ↑ Endlsey, M (1995). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems (37 ed.). pp. 32–64.
- ↑ Avermaete, van (1998). "NOTECHS: Non-technical skill evaluation in JAR-FCL" (PDF).
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ↑ Flin, Rhona (2003). "Development of the NOTECHS (non-technical skills) system for assessing pilots' CRM skills" (PDF).
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ↑ Flin, Rhona (2003). "Development of the NOTECHS (non-technical skills) system for assessing pilots' CRM skills" (PDF).
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ↑ CAA (2002). Methods used to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Flightcrew CRM Training in the UK Aviation Industry (PDF). Gatwick, Sussex: Civil Aviation Authority. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
- ↑ Goeters, K (2002). Evaluation of the effects of CRM training by the assessment of non-technical skills under LOFT (2 ed.). Human Factors and Aerospace Safety. pp. 71–86.