Factoring in Psychological Research for Aviation Safety at NASA Factoring in Psychological Research for Aviation Safety at NASA By Geoff Mumford, PhD, Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer Aviation accidents make big news, and more often than not, these accidents are attributed to pilot error. This sterile parlance, a catch phrase common within aviation circles for years, made its way into the mainstream vocabulary this summer with the August crash of a Korean Airlines 747 in Guam. Simply stated, it means the pilot flew the airplane into the ground. Equipped with modern avionics, the most sophisticated airplanes can virtually take off and land by themselves. One answer is clearly human factors.
Recent history is rife with other examples.
An airliner crashed into the sea off the coast of Peru because a piece of duct tape covering an external component of the airspeed indicator was not removed during the preflight inspection. A pilot dialed up the wrong code on a critical navigation device and, instead of being directed to a safe landing, flew his airliner into a mountain. In the single largest loss of life to date, a pilot in a rush to get home failed to adhere to controller instructions and plowed through another airliner taxiing on the same foggy runway. The often-quoted comparison suggesting that flying is safer than driving a car is statistically true, but air travel demand is expected to triple over the next 20 years. Even the low aviation accident rates of today would become unacceptably high if current trends continued unabated.