Flight crews are the primary cause in two out of three accidents in the 41 states of the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC), according to Mike Ambrose, director general of the European Regions Airline Association (ERA). Ambrose was speaking at the March 18 to 19 European Aviation Safety Seminar jointly presented in Geneva, by the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) and ERA. Human factors were a major theme of the seminar, entitled “Change: a Safety Challenge” and held against the backdrop of worsening economic gloom, particularly in the airline industry, as well as the opening of hostilities in Iraq.
With all the technical and operational improvements introduced over the past 15 years, Ambrose said the number of accidents had stabilized but the proportion in which human factors were a primary cause had actually grown. “Today’s high safety standards,” he said, “have been achieved by better design, testing, production and certification of aircraft, components and systems, greater reliability, new avionics, aircraft management and control system technology, more enlightened training techniques and better devices, enhanced air traffic management systems and many other factors. To some extent, the rise in human factors could be said to be a natural result of putting so much emphasis on the technical aspects of flight safety. But emerging technology must take human factors into account, and traditional safety requirements must not be overridden by new security measures.”
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