Association says safety board overlooks human factors
US Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) president Duane Woerth has accused the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) of overlooking human-factors principles during the investigation of aviation accidents.
In a letter to NTSB acting chairman Mark Rosenker, Woerth urges deeper consideration from the NTSB when it cites human error as a contributing factor in crashes, accusing the agency of appearing to “favour the easy route of citing ‘crew error’ and not delving further. Since the vast majority of aviation accidents are the result of many factors, it is shortsighted and troubling to simply say, in effect, ‘the flightcrew failed to prevent the accident’,” says Woerth.
The NTSB on 8 September concluded that pilot error contributed to the 9 May, 2004 crash-landing of an American Eagle/Executive Airlines ATR 72 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The report says the captain “failed to execute proper techniques to recover from the bounced landings” and failed to execute a go-around.
Woerth says this conclusion was reached “with no apparent analysis at all of whether training, experience, or corporate safety culture may have predisposed this pilot to exceed his own ability in an effort to land on the first attempt”.
An agreement “many years ago” between ALPA and the NTSB to form a ‘human performance’ investigative group to “enhance accident investigations” has since been reversed, says the ALPA head.
Rather, he says, the NTSB tendency “now is to subordinate the study of human factors issues to the operations group, or to ignore those issues altogether”.
Responding to Woerth’s comments, Rosenker says the latter claim “clearly misrepresents the facts and this agency’s record”. NTSB investigators have found that “human factors issues do not always lend themselves to pursuit by a single group, but instead require support and input from multiple disciplines”, he adds.
Cockpit video cameras would help the agency draw human factors conclusions, says Rosenker.
KERRY EZARD/WASHINGTON DC
Source: Flight International
