Pilot error rate ‘significantly declined’

By Chris Kjelgaard

Senior Editor

updated 10:48 a.m. ET Dec. 31, 2007

Pilot error is probably much less of a factor in mishaps involving U.S. airliners now than it was in the early 1980s, a new study suggests.

The study, by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, discovered that the number of U.S. airline accidents due to pilot error "significantly declined" between 1983 and 2002.

Although the overall rate of U.S. airline accidents remained stable throughout the period, the proportion of mishaps involving pilot error decreased 40 percent, they found.

"A 40 percent decline in pilot error-related mishaps is very impressive. Pilot error has long been considered the most prominent contributor to aviation crashes," said Susan Baker, the lead author of the study, published in the January 2008 edition of “Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine.”

The researchers defined a mishap as being any U.S. airline safety event that the NTSB officially recorded as an accident, because it involved serious injury to one or more persons or significant damage to an airliner. The airlines included were any that were defined as scheduled or unscheduled U.S. air carriers under Part 121 of the Federal Aviation Regulations.

Although the long-term study didn't take into account any NTSB accident data after 2002, it's likely the reduction in pilot error that the researchers found has continued to the present day — even though the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found pilot error was primarily to blame for last year's Comair crash at Lexington, Ky., in which 49 people died.

Cockpit resource management a factor
Baker attributes the significant decline in pilot-error-related accidents to improvements in pilot training, flight deck technology and the development of cockpit resource management (CRM) techniques. CRM is a crew-coordination discipline that came into being in the 1980s and the FAA, the NTSB and all U.S. and major international airlines emphasize it strongly today.

"We saw a reduction in pilot error crashes where crew interaction was a factor. That, and weather-related decisions," said Baker. "Trends indicate that great progress has been made to improve the decision-making of pilots and coordination between the aircraft's crew members."

Significant improvements in flight deck technology between 1983 and 2002 particularly contributed to the improvement in weather-related decision-making, she added.

The researchers analyzed 558 separate accidents. "A lot were not airplane crashes," said Baker. "Maybe a quarter involved turbulence." Many others involved accidents while aircraft were sitting at the gate or being pushed back for departure.

Baker and her colleagues studied the circumstances of pilot error, which they characterized as carelessness on the part of the pilot and other flight crew; flawed decision-making; mishandling of the aircraft; or poor crew interaction.

The study's key findings
Their key findings were that:

• Mishaps related to bad weather, the most common decision-making error, fell by 76 percent.
• Accidents caused by mishandling wind or runway conditions dropped 78 percent. "I would think training would have a lot to do with that," said Baker. "But it's not just training. I think a lot of it may be technology."
• Mishaps caused by poor crew interaction declined 68 percent, from 2.8 to 0.9 per 10 million departures. "I would certainly attribute that to cockpit resource management," she said.
• Pilot error occurred most often during taxiing, take-off, final approach and landing — which are the phases of any flight that most require flight-crew concentration.
• However, the pilot-error-related accident rate during take-off fell by 70 percent during the 20-year period of the study.
• The mishap rate increased most when aircraft were being pushed back from the gate or standing still — but pilot error happened least often in these accidents.

MORE FROM NEWS

News Section Front

US Airways jet diverted after landing gear glitch Strippers-on-a-truck promotion halted in Vegas Obama team reaches out to airline industry European airports see traffic picking up Pilot charged with being drunk before flight Drop in Thanksgiving travel forecast Woman drives into aquarium at airport Engine fire grounds Delta plane in Atlanta Mechanical issue forces jet’s return to JFK Alaska Airlines starts Oakland-Hawaii service News Section Front   Add News headlines to your news reader: