Application of HFACS to the Nighttime Aviation Accidents and Incidents

Abstract

Commercial aviation accidents and incidents are more prevalent at the certain times of the day. Operational problems (e.g., night vision, flash blindness, black hole illusion, and reflection) faced by pilots while performing nighttime flights pose threats to flight safety. The present paper aims to examine the contributing factors to commercial aviation accidents occurred at night. In this paper, accident reports of 30 commercial airplane crashes occurred over the past five years were analyzed. The contributing factors of those accidents were examined by using HFACS (Human Factors Analysis and Classification System). The relative importance of the causal factors was determined. Literature reviews have indicated that no study has examined the causality of nighttime commercial aircraft accidents by using HFACS as a framework. It was found that physical environment was the most significant causal factor. Skill-based errors were second-highest contributing factors. Perceptual errors and decision errors were ranked as third-highest causal factors. We believe that our results may be useful for reducing the chances of human error and raising safety standards of commercial airline operations.

Application of “Human Factor Analysis and Classification System” (HFACS) Model to the Prevention of Medical Errors and Adverse Events: A Systematic Review

“…The HFACS is a commonly used tool for analyzing human factors issues associated with accidents across a variety of industries, including aviation, railway, shipping, mining, manufacturing, and healthcare. [ 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 ] HFACS consists of causal categories under each of Reason’s four levels of error causation. Each of the categories consists of nanocodes that represent specific human behaviors or system situations that may lead to errors.…”

Human Error Analysis and Modeling of Medication-Related Adverse Events in Taiwan Using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System and Logistic Regression

“…With the increased amount of research on human errors, several human error analysis methods and classification models have been developed, including the HFACS, SHELL model, root cause analysis, human error assessment and reduction technique, the technique for the retrospective and predictive analysis of cognitive errors, and systematic human error reduction and prediction approach. Compared with other methods, HFACS provides a relatively comprehensive analysis framework that considers behavioral, managerial, and organizational factors and is widely used for accident analysis in aviation safety [1,[18][19][20][21], patient safety [2,22], railway and marine safety [23,24], the oil and gas industry [25], and other fields. The HFACS was developed by Wiegmann and Shappell (2012) based on the Swiss cheese model [14], which provides a relatively complete structural framework for human error analysis [26].…”

Presenteeism Among Ab-initio Pilots in Turkey

“…Pilots are prone to making errors when they are ill (Johansson & Melin, 2018a) (Kilic, 2020a). There is an association between errors and adverse psychological and mental states of aircrew (e.g., sickness, stress, fatigue, loss of situational awareness and lack of vigilance) (Kilic & Gumus, 2020) (Kilic & Soran, 2019) (Kilic, 2022) Adverse physiological and mental states of the aircrew were attributed to 29% of training flight accidents (Kilic, 2019), 7% of air cargo accidents (Kilic & Gündogdu, 2020) and 16% of hot-air balloon accidents (Kilic, 2020b).…”