Human Reliability Quantification in Flight Through a Simplified CREAM Method

Abstract

The complex flight procedures and various operating devices form a sophisticated operational context in flight, and the aircraft may encounter multitudinous risky factors. A large number of surveys show that human error is the most important factor in aviation accidents. The flight crew needs pay more attention to operational risks in critical flight-phases, and it is a serious concern for aviation safety to conduct human reliability analysis (HRA). However, the issues of lacking data, and the complexity of human behavior have greatly reduced the applicability of well-established HRA methods in flight context. The main purpose of the study is to determine human error probability (HEP) for specific flight tasks and predict safety level of operation in flight. This paper adopts a simplified Cognitive reliability and error analysis method (CREAM) to quantify human reliability for critical flight-phases. The example of HRA of the Boeing 737–800 operation process is utilized to demonstrate the proposed model. The results provide contributions to aviation safety and realizes the effective assessment of human reliability for specific flight tasks.