Dr Bert Boquet heads the human factors and systems department at Daytona Beach, Florida-based Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He recently led a team which applied a human factors analysis and classification system to 1,935 maintenance-related commercial and general aviation accidents in the USA from 1990-2003.
While maintenance-related issues are understood to cause fewer accidents than those errors committed by aircrews, with up to 23% of accidents thought to be causally related to maintenance, an examination of the nature of those accidents in commercial and general aviation is interesting.
"What really stood out was the skill-based level where errors occur: low processing tasks. Errors here are consistent throughout all industries. They are the tasks we have to do, but the ones we don't have to think about, the things we do by second nature," says Boquet.
A further look at the level of violations by maintainers (30%) compared with pilots (10%) came as a shock to Boquet. "But then when you think about the different environment it makes sense, because violations are not so much about breaking regulations but deviating from procedures, and you have to acknowledge that figures may be inflated as the maintenance industry may tend to be harsher on itself."
What strikes Boquet in terms of maintainers operating within a future safety management system environment in the USA where initiatives are just ramping up, is that one issue that will loom large is fatigue. "There has historically been a lot of protection for pilots in terms of crew rest, for example, but those things are still not in place for aircraft maintainers. In an industry where pay tends to be low, hours long and working conditions difficult, that speaks to their professionalism. If you look at aircraft maintenance as an aviation system that has not had any particular attention in terms of the development of a safety management system, it's done a pretty good job."
Embry-Riddle University will soon assess the real business effects of fatigue at a US maintenance provider with whose permission it will be able to publish the study findings. "From interviews we know fatigue is a real issue. The big thing for the industry is the shortage of maintainers. You start to mention the need for rest and that's going to immediately affect workforce capacity which is already under pressure. It is a long overdue issue," says Boquet.
A natural consequence of labour shortage is more outsourcing by major airlines' engineering departments with independent maintenance providers more likely then to use increased contract labour.
"This all puts pressure on the already-overstretched Federal Aviation Administration inspection official. There are not enough of them out there to get the job done now and as more work is outsourced that puts even more pressure on that inspection system."
Ideally, Boquet says safety management system efforts should be linked to maintenance error levels rather than the much lower MRO-related accident tally. "For me, the real issue is that what is lacking in aviation is the lack of any standardised approach to how we collect that data," he says. "That is holding us back. Everyone, especially as we become more global, needs to be willing to share data, accident data and especially error data."
Source: Flight International
