A Contemporary Analysis of Aircraft Maintenance-Related Accidents and Serious Incidents

Jennifer Insley,Cengiz Turkoglu

doi:10.3390/aerospace7060081

Jennifer Insley, Cengiz Turkoglu

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace7060081

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Journal: Aerospace	Publication Date: Jun 17, 2020
Citations: 19	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Lockheed Martin (United Kingdom), Cranfield University

Abstract

Aircraft maintenance has been identified as a key point of concern within many high-risk areas of aviation; still being a casual/contributory factor in a number of accidents and serious incidents in commercial air transport industry. The purpose of this study is to review and analyse the aircraft maintenance-related accidents and serious incidents which occurred between 2003 and 2017, to provide a better understanding of the causal and contributory factors. To achieve this, a dataset of maintenance-related accidents and serious incidents was compiled and then qualitatively analysed by thematic analysis method. Coding these events by using NVivo software enabled the development of a taxonomy, MxFACS. The coded output was then evaluated by subject matter experts, and an inter-rater concordance value determined to demonstrate the rigour of the research process. Subsequently, the events were evaluated in terms of their relationship to known accident categories such as loss of control, runway excursions. The most frequent maintenance event consequences were found to be runway excursions and air turnbacks, with the second level categories being related to failures in engine and landing gear systems. The greatest maintenance factor issues were ‘inadequate maintenance procedures’ and ‘inspections not identifying defects’. In terms of fatalities, ‘collision events’ were the most prominent consequence, ‘engine-related events’ were the most significant event, and ‘inadequate maintenance procedures’ were the most concerning maintenance factor. The study’s findings may be used in conjunction with existing risk analysis methodologies and enable the stakeholders to develop generic or customised bowties. This may identify the existing barriers in the system as well as weaknesses which will enable the development of mitigation strategies on both organisational and industry-wide levels.

Highlights

Content and and on how the content is produced through language of empirical data, and on how the content is produced through language practices. Research done from these philosophical positions does not predefine. Research done from these philosophical positions not predefine dependent dependent and independent variables, but focuses on the fulldoes complexity of human sense and independent variables, but focuses on the full complexity of human sense making as the making as the situations emerge
A number of challenges and limitations were encountered within the study. These were in relation to data collection and analysis, Subject-Matter Experts (SME) survey, and the MxFACS taxonomy as a whole
The development of the MxFACS taxonomy brings about a contemporary approach for exploring the nature of these maintenance events, by looking at a combination of maintenance-specific causations, system/component failures, and event outcomes

Summary

Introduction

5-step ‘safety risk management process’ (as shown in Figure 1), which requires collaborative efforts by European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), National Aviation Authorities of EU member states and—most importantly—all the other stakeholders in the industry. In order to address the industry-wide risks, EASA annually publishes the following two key documents: Annual Safety Review. Annual safety reviews include multiple, domain specific ‘safety risk portfolios’, which are developed based on the analysis of accidents, serious incidents, and other reportable occurrence data. This analysis is further reviewed and assessed by the domain focused ‘collaborative analysis groups’. CAGs function is to contribute to the first and second steps in the ‘safety risk management process’, which aims for the development of the ‘European Plan for Aviation Safety’ [1] CAGs function is to contribute to the first and second steps in the ‘safety risk management process’, which aims for the development of the ‘European Plan for Aviation Safety’ [1] (pp. 15, 16)

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