| The approach-and-landing phases of flight represent 27% of mission time while resulting in 61 of the accidents and 39% of the fatalities. The landing phase itself represents only 1% of flight time but claims 45% of the accidents. Inadequate crew situation awareness (SA), crew resource management (CRM), and crew decision-making (DM) have been implicated in 51%, 63%, and 73% respectively of these accidents. The human factors constructs of SA, CRM, and DM were explored; a comprehensive definition of SA was proposed; and a "proactive defense" safety strategy was recommended. Data from a 1997 analysis of worldwide fatal accidents by the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) Approach-and-Landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) Task Force was used to isolate crew- and weather-related causal factors that lead to approach-and-landing accidents (ALAs). Logistic regression and decision tree analysis were used on samplings of NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) incident records ("near misses") and the National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) accident reports to examine hypotheses regarding factors and factor combinations that can dramatically increase the opportunity for accidents. An effective scale of risk factors was introduced for use by crews to proactively counter safety-related error-chain situations. |
