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This chapter examines pre-existing problems in the global airline industry caused by economic and historical factors, as well as four recent events (economic recession, war, the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, and the SARS epidemic) that led to the current 'Perfect Storm'. The chapter concludes with a discussion of efforts at the government, industry, firm and individual level to deal with the crisis in the air transport industry.

Since 1999, aircraft maintenance personnel in the European Union (EU) have been required to take human factors training. This training is not required in the United States (US). The relative rates of maintenance-related incidents in the US and the EU were compared prior to and after the implementation of mandatory human factors training in the EU. Prior to 1999, the rates of maintenance-related error for the EU and the US were not statistically different. In the years following the implementation of mandatory human factors training in the EU, the difference in rates for the US and the EU became statistically significant. Our results suggest that human factors training may be valuable in reducing maintenance-related error in aviation.

In this paper we addressed one aspect of team cognition, namely shared knowledge, and investigated the relationship between shared knowledge and collective efficacy. The task was doubles tennis; participants were 160 adults, for a total of 80 teams. Data was collected via self-report questionnaires. As we had suspected, there was a strong, positive relationship between collective efficacy and shared knowledge (r = .5, p < .05). Using hierarchical regression, we also found that team familiarity was positively related to shared knowledge, while both task skill and team familiarity were positively related to collective efficacy