Judgemental errors in aviation maintenance

Abstract

Aircraft maintenance is a critical success factor in the aviation sector, and incorrect maintenance actions themselves can be the cause of accidents. Judgemental errors are the top causal factors of maintenance-related aviation accidents. This study asks why judgemental errors occur in maintenance. Referring to six aviation accidents, we show how various biases contributed to those accidents. We first filtered aviation accident reports, looking for accidents linked to errors in maintenance judgements. We analysed the investigation reports, as well as the relevant interview transcriptions. Then we set the characteristics of the actions behind the accidents within the context of the literature and the taxonomy of reasons for judgemental biases. Our results demonstrate how various biases, such as theory-induced blindness, optimistic bias, and substitution bias misled maintenance technicians and eventually become the main cause of a catastrophe. We also find these biases are interrelated, with one causing another to develop. We discuss how these judgemental errors could relate to loss of situation awareness, and suggest interventions to mitigate them.

Impact of human factors in aircraft accident mitigation and aircraft maintenance training needs in post COVID-19 aviation

“…The judgmental error is the major cause of incorrect maintenance act which leads to accident (Illankoon and Tretten, 2019). Industry should minimize errors and should increase safety by incorporating human factors applications in critical roles (De Crescenzio et al , 2011).…”

“…Industry should minimize errors and should increase safety by incorporating human factors applications in critical roles (De Crescenzio et al , 2011). Predictive and preventive maintenance tasks such as fault identification, diagnosis and forecast should be error free (Illankoon and Tretten, 2019). Even after achieving defect-less designs, best component service life and skilled top pilots, the maintenance errors and flaw in maintenance planning causes 20% of aircraft accidents (Rahmawati et al , 2020).…”

Reliability Augmentation through Technological Applications in Indian Aircraft Maintenance Training sector

“…In aviation, Maintenance related accidents have one usual factor being Judgemental Errors. The two automatic thought types are heuristic bias and skilled intuition [15]. Errors caused by humans should be minimized in order to increase air transportation safety, with respect to the cause of aviation incidents and accidents.…”

“…This significantly minimises the errors [7]. Detection, diagnosis and prognosis are three important phases where once a behaviour that deviates is detected, cause of action is diagnosed and future performance can be predicted which can be corrected through preventive [15]. Even after preventing eerrors pilots are the final weapon to avoid air crashes.…”

Comparative Analysis of Human Operators and Advanced Technologies in the Visual Inspection of Aero Engine Blades

“…Human factors are the dominant contributor to maintenance errors and account for approximately 80% of them [2,3,5]. Within those, search and judgement errors are the primary issue [6,7]. Furthermore, it is known that structural failures are the main reason for maintenance-related incidents and that those are likely to occur on the engine, e.g., facture of a blade [2].…”