Aviation Occurrences Research Articles

A Review of Training Procedures for Simulated Engine Failure after Take-Off Exercises with Twin-Engine Aircraft under 5700 kg

Engine failure after take-off (or one engine being inoperative) is an exercise conducted as part of multi-engine flight training and on-going competency checking. To prepare pilots to manage a real in-flight emergency, this exercise has traditionally been conducted immediately after take-off. This has led to increased risks of fatal accidents due to the reduced height at which these exercises are typically conducted. Yet, there is variation in the heights stipulated in training procedures published by different stakeholders worldwide. Additionally, the conduct of the exercise has resulted in fatal accidents worldwide. This paper aims to review the previous literature on aviation training and aviation occurrence data to determine what empirical data exists to support the method of conducting simulated engine failures. Peer-reviewed academic publications on aviation training, aviation occurrence databases such as aviation investigation reports, and guidance materials published by aviation authorities on simulated training exercises will be included in this paper. It was found that the previous research on these exercises has focused on the transfer of motion cues or pilot responses to abnormal situations, but did not include specific data comparing pilot performance at different heights above ground level. A review of aviation occurrences found that actual engine failures occurred at higher heights that those used in simulated engine failures. A comparison of the guidance published by aviation authorities identified variations in the minimum altitude published and differing justifications for the minimum height chosen. Future research is needed to compare pilot performance during simulated engine failures to determine the ideal height to conduct the exercise to be representative of an actual engine failure while maintaining safety margins.

Causal Factors Analysis of runway excursion occurrences through Fuzzy Logic Modeling method

Runway excursion (RE) was one of main contributing factors to aviation occurrences whilst unstable approach precursors were the ones accounting for a significant proportion of those occurrences. The objective of this study is to identify the most influencing causal factors (hazards and risks) of RE occurrences and propose countermeasures to mitigate potential RE risks and RE occurrences in Taiwan. Causal Factors Analysis System and Fuzzy Logic Modeling method are used to classify hazards and risks of RE occurrences and establish a fuzzy logic model for RE occurrence predictions. The final squared multiple correlation coefficients (R2 = 0.9999) verify that the predictive capabilities of the final RE model are not affected after the exclusion of the less influencing parameters. Sensitivity analysis reveals that avoiding crosswind or tailwind landings can significantly reduce the likelihood of RE occurrences; and reducing inadequate supervision related errors is the most cost-effective strategy to mitigate probable RE risks. Local civil aviation authority and airline operators are all responsible to collaborate with each other to mitigate causal factors of RE occurrences due to inadequate supervision. Recommended countermeasures to the civil aviation authority: maintain sufficient depth of technical staff and appropriate deployment of management level personnel to conduct safety oversight; to airline operators: formulate non-punitive policy, clearly define and document go-around procedures, and develop evidence-based training for pilot monitoring's competencies needed including monitoring, call out and intervention to take control.

Comparative Analysis of Aviation Occurrence Patterns among Three Northeast Asian Countries: South Korea, China and Japan

This study investigates the commonalities and differences in aviation occurrences among three Northeast Asian countries–South Korea, China and Japan, using the ICAO's Integrated Safety Trend Analysis and Reporting System (iSTARS) dataset. Logistic regression and latent class analysis are employed to identify factors influencing the likelihood of fatalities and to classify occurrences into distinct groups. The findings indicate that operational issues in airspace pose greater risks than runway-related issues in this region. The ground and landing flight phases have lower fatality likelihoods compared to the cruise phase, and winter seasons show reduced odds of fatalities. Latent class analysis identifies five distinct occurrence classes, highlighting specific risks and areas for targeted interventions. Technical and environmental issues are prominent in Japan, while operational issues during the cruise and maneuvering phases are significant in South Korea, associated with a high fatality rate. Light recreational general aviation flights pose a considerable risk of fatalities in China and Japan. The findings of this study highlight the need for comprehensive research to explore the causes and contributing factors of aviation occurrences in different countries to enhance safety practices and mitigate fatality risks.

Key Safety Rules During Safety Investigation – On The Example of Two International Organisations

The aim of the work is to look at the most important safety principles during the investigation of aviation accidents. Two international organisations dealing with civil aviation were selected to present the topic. The most important legal acts in the field of investigation of aviation occurrences issued by these organizations were analyzed. The most important safety principles were selected from these acts and then compared.

Subjective measures of communication errors between pilots and air traffic controllers

Communication errors between aircraft pilots and air traffic controllers are one of the most critical issues for aviation safety. Air traffic controller and pilot interaction may involve communication errors, becoming the most common factor combination that leads to a number of high-severity aviation incidents. This study explored the factors and aviation occurrences of pilot-controller communication errors and offered several recommendations to improve flight safety. The perspectives of pilots and air traffic controllers were separately analyzed via two differently designed survey questionnaires. Then, t-tests, analysis of variance, factor analysis, and linear regression analysis were performed to analyze the survey results, and concluded five factors, two communication errors, and two main aviation occurrences. Based on the results, this study suggested improving controllers' professional abilities, such as using the correct phraseology, listening comprehension, concentration, and giving accurate, clear and concise instructions. Strengthening pilots' training on situational awareness, standard operating processes, and urgent problem-solving is also critical. Crew resource management should be highlighted to improve communication between pilots and controllers. The findings of this study serve as reference to reduce communication errors and improve aviation safety.

The nature and costs of civil aviation flight training safety occurrences

The continuing growth of the aviation industry will see robust demand for more qualified pilots in the coming years. To meet the standards required to qualify as pilot, individuals must undergo extensive training. Flight training, like all other parts of aviation, is not without risks. Previous research that examined the nature and costs of accidents and incidents within the general aviation industry has put little emphasis on flight training. The present work explores the nature and costs of incident, serious incidents, and accidents within the Australian flight training industry between the 1st of January 2000 and the 31st of December 2019. This study of 7863 flight training safety occurrences is the single largest study of the phenomena to date. This has facilitated the confirmation of some previous noted results, as well as refuting some others. All flight training data categories are statistically significantly different relative to all general aviation occurrences, as reported to the ATSB. It was noted that safety occurrences during landing and approach phases are significantly higher for flight training than previous studies. Occurrences during climb and standing resulted in more injuries and fatalities than expected. While solo instructional flights were found to be less fatal, the probability of an accident or serious incident or aircraft damage being from solo operations has increased over the period of the study. Of particular concern is that the accident and occurrence rates have increased over the period examined. The fact that the safety of flight training has not significantly improved is further shown by the extremely high costs that have resulted from these incidents and accidents.

ASRS-CMFS vs. RoBERTa: Comparing Two Pre-Trained Language Models to Predict Anomalies in Aviation Occurrence Reports with a Low Volume of In-Domain Data Available

We consider the problem of solving Natural Language Understanding (NLU) tasks characterized by domain-specific data. An effective approach consists of pre-training Transformer-based language models from scratch using domain-specific data before fine-tuning them on the task at hand. A low domain-specific data volume is problematic in this context, given that the performance of language models relies heavily on the abundance of data during pre-training. To study this problem, we create a benchmark replicating realistic field use of language models to classify aviation occurrences extracted from the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) corpus. We compare two language models on this new benchmark: ASRS-CMFS, a compact model inspired from RoBERTa, pre-trained from scratch using only little domain-specific data, and the regular RoBERTa model, with no domain-specific pre-training. The RoBERTa model benefits from its size advantage, while the ASRS-CMFS benefits from the pre-training from scratch strategy. We find no compelling statistical evidence that RoBERTa outperforms ASRS-CMFS, but we show that ASRS-CMFS is more compute-efficient than RoBERTa. We suggest that pre-training a compact model from scratch is a good strategy for solving domain-specific NLU tasks using Transformer-based language models in the context of domain-specific data scarcity.

Proces zgłaszania zdarzeń lotniczych w ramach systemu zarządzania bezpieczeństwem na przykładzie instytucji zapewniającej służby żeglugi powietrznej

Aviation safety management issue has been regulated relatively recently. Safety itself has been a priority in the activities of aviation entities since World War II. It was then that people started to pay attention to the factors that lower the level of safety in the performance of tasks. International aviation organizations cooperate in the development of regulations and guidelines in the field of safety, including the reporting of aviation occurrences. They must take into account the emerging and new challenges faced by civil aviation and support aviation entities in managing safety in a uniform manner. Air accidents are often preceded by safety incidents and deficiencies indicating the existence of threats, therefore systems based solely on response have limited use in further improving safety and should therefore be complemented by proactive systems that use other types of safety information.

Designing an expert system to support aviation occurrence investigations

This paper introduces an Expert System acting as an intelligent agent to interrogate past aircraft occurrence data to support the aircraft occurrence investigators. This Expert System can potentially identify similar occurrences that provide indicators of contributing factors that may otherwise have been missed. This intelligence comes from the Expert System’s ability to learn from past occurrence data using the combined Fuzzy Logic System (FLS) inference technique and AcciMaps to emulate the aircraft occurrence investigators’ evidence analytical reason model. The learned expert knowledge is presented graphically and interactively to the user (investigator) using the AcciMaps. The paper includes an overview of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) investigation evidence analysis workflow, popular mainstream inference techniques used in Expert Systems, evaluation of the proposed Fuzzy Logic System (FLS) inference technique and AcciMap, including an example study. The FLS inference technique has met the Expert System requirements to support aviation occurrence investigations.

The review of methods for a real-time monitoring and forecasting bird strike risk level

A high level of flight safety is a priority for all aviation organizations in the world. The negative impact of the natural environment on air operations is one of the most common factors causing the situations exerting a negative influence on flight safety (in short-aviation occurrence) in the Polish Army. The most common reason of the aviation occurrence connected with the environment area is the bird strike. The lack of a method for real-time monitoring and forecasting bird strike risk level is a significant gap in the proactive approach to flight safety within the Polish Air Force. The article presents a review of the methods for monitoring and forecasting the intensity of bird movements, which were used to build advisory systems used by air forces of the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Israel. The article consists of summary of most important properties of the methods and analysis in terms of their applicability in the Polish conditions. Particular attention was paid to the complicated network of routes of bird species occurring on Polish territory. Finally, after proving the incomplete usefulness of the above-mentioned methods in Polish conditions, the need to develop a more adequate method was justified.

Threats to Aviation Safety Caused by Defects in Aircraft Airframe Systems

Abstract Alongside the increase in air traffic and number of aircraft, the number of reported aviation events has also been increasing. We processed the data included in the European Coordination Centre for Aviation Incident reporting Systems (ECCAIRS), analyzing small and large aircraft reliability and the safety of their operations, covering events according to ICAO aviation occurrence categories. Airframe systems are the largest contributor to the total number of reported events which occurred in Polish registered aircraft in the years 2008–2020. A detailed study of airframe systems reliability was carried out in order to assess the real reason for the failures. Airframe systems faults were assigned to specific ATA chapters and then to each of their sections. The results of this analysis may support the decisions of supervisory authorities in the areas where security threats are most important. They can also help aircraft operators with identification of the airframe units which require special attention. Identification of significant parts due to the frequency of malfunctions of particular system components may support designers. In short, these results are valuable in terms of further developments in statistical tools facilitating New Product Introduction (NPI).

Evaluation of the Human Harnesses used by Tactical Flight Officers in Brazilian Public Air Units

This work evaluates the normative and legal compliance related to the human harnesses used by tactical flight officers in the institutional missions conducted by the Brazilian Public Air Units (UAPs), regulated by the Brazilian Civil Aviation Regulation (RBAC) no. 90. The study bases its analysis on the identification of regulatory obstructions that limit the performance of the Brazilian State, from the operational and aeronautical product certification standpoints, as well as on the demonstration of legal risks to the current operational context adopted by the units. The use of inappropriate human harnesses has shown to be a contributing factor to aviation occurrences and fatalities in Brazil. This research delivers a regulatory alternative with a view to greater operational flexibility, legal safeguards and increased safety for the UAPs and entities that employ air transportation as a tool for their institutional activities.

Seasonality in Air Traffic and Incidence of Dangerous Occurrences in the Polish Air Transport Market in 2010-2017

Purpose: The aim of the research was to identify the relation between flight operations conducted in the summer and winter seasons, and dangerous occurrences which took place then. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research involved the indicator method used in time series analysis. The interdependence between the quantitative variables was determined with the use of the Pearson line correlation coefficient. Statistical data for the analyses was obtained from the European Coordination Centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems (ECCAIRS) and the Polish Civil Aviation Authority. Results: Relations were identified between the variables of the number of passengers carried, the number of flight operations conducted, adverse aviation occurrences in 2010-2017, and the winter and summer seasons of the year. The results indicate that these variables are interrelated. Practical implications: The approach employed in analysing the relation between the variables concerned can be applied to processes of pro-active civil aviation safety management. Originality/value: The approach to analysing the variables shown in the paper has not been widely presented in the literature to date.

Explanation of Machine-Learning Solutions in Air-Traffic Management

Advances in the trusted autonomy of air-traffic management (ATM) systems are currently being pursued to cope with the predicted growth in air-traffic densities in all classes of airspace. Highly automated ATM systems relying on artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for anomaly detection, pattern identification, accurate inference, and optimal conflict resolution are technically feasible and demonstrably able to take on a wide variety of tasks currently accomplished by humans. However, the opaqueness and inexplicability of most intelligent algorithms restrict the usability of such technology. Consequently, AI-based ATM decision-support systems (DSS) are foreseen to integrate eXplainable AI (XAI) in order to increase interpretability and transparency of the system reasoning and, consequently, build the human operators’ trust in these systems. This research presents a viable solution to implement XAI in ATM DSS, providing explanations that can be appraised and analysed by the human air-traffic control operator (ATCO). The maturity of XAI approaches and their application in ATM operational risk prediction is investigated in this paper, which can support both existing ATM advisory services in uncontrolled airspace (Classes E and F) and also drive the inflation of avoidance volumes in emerging performance-driven autonomy concepts. In particular, aviation occurrences and meteorological databases are exploited to train a machine learning (ML)-based risk-prediction tool capable of real-time situation analysis and operational risk monitoring. The proposed approach is based on the XGBoost library, which is a gradient-boost decision tree algorithm for which post-hoc explanations are produced by SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) and Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME). Results are presented and discussed, and considerations are made on the most promising strategies for evolving the human–machine interactions (HMI) to strengthen the mutual trust between ATCO and systems. The presented approach is not limited only to conventional applications but also suitable for UAS-traffic management (UTM) and other emerging applications.

Human Factors in Aviation Disasters of Military Jet Aircraft of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic

The article deals with aviation disasters from 1948 to the present and it involves disasters of military jet fighter, fighter-trainer and trainer aircraft. It focuses on the role of human factors of the flight personnel. Based on the extensive analyses of circumstances and causes of individual aviation occurrences, root causes of factors that have endangered the lives of pilots in carrying out their work are determined. To conclude, recommendations are given to reduce or in many cases even to eliminate the effects of these factors on flight safety.

Civil Aviation Occurrences in Slovakia and Their Evaluation Using Statistical Methods

The nature of a civil aviation occurrence may be defined in three different categories while considering its severity. General categories include civil aviation accidents, serious incidents and incidents. The present article analyses the civil aviation occurrences in Slovakia which happened in the period from 2000 to 2019. In this period, there was a significant increase in the number of civil aviation occurrences, and incidents, in particular, represented the highest percentage. A Pareto analysis was applied to identify the key incident categories (wildlife strike, technical failures of the aviation technology and unauthorised penetration of airspace). A multiple regression analysis and the Poisson regression were used to create two models of correlations between the number of civil aviation occurrences and the selected input variables. Both models are statistically significant, and, based on the AIC (Akaike Information Criterion), the Poisson regression model appeared to be of higher quality. The model showed, for example, that an increase in variables (the number of commercial aircrafts aged over 14 years and the number of total aircraft movements) resulted in a slight increase in the expected number of civil aviation occurrences.

Large aircraft reliability study as important aspect of the aircraft systems' design changes and improvements

Along with the increase in air traffic, the number of reported aviation events also increases. The authors have performed processing of the data included in the European Coordination Centre for Aviation Incident Reporting Systems (ECCAIRS) analyzing large aircraft reliability and safety of their operations considering events according to ICAO aviation occurrence categories. The airframe systems are the biggest contributor to the total number of reported events which occurred on the Polish registered large aircraft in the years 2008–2018. Failures of these systems caused more than 23% of total reported aviation events. Based on the ECCAIRS data, determination of occurrence categories essential for aviation safety was performed with the assessment of their safety risk level. Also, detailed airframe systems' reliability study was carried out in order to assess the real reason of their failures. Airframe systems' faults were assigned to the specific ATA chapters and then to each of their sections. The most frequently occurring defects of each unit of the particular airframe system were identified. The results of this analysis may support the decisions of supervisory authorities in the areas where security threats are most important. They can also help aircraft operators with identification of the airframe units which require special attention, and as support in improvement of safety analysis. Identification of significant parts due to the frequency of malfunctions of the system components can be a support for designers who have the information needed to improve the design of specific airframe system.

Civil Aviation Occurrences in Indonesia

Globally, civil air traffic has been growing rapidly in recent years, and with this growth, there has been a considerable improvement in air safety. However, in Indonesia, the recent rate of incidents and accidents in aviation is far higher than the global average. This study aims to assess civil aviation safety occurrences in Indonesia and, for the first time, to investigate factors contributing to these occurrences within commercial Indonesian aviation operations. In this study, 97 incident/accident investigation reports published by the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee between 2007 and 2015 were analysed. The most common occurrences involved Runway Excursions, Loss of Control In-Flight, and Controlled Flight into Terrain. In terms of the likelihoods of the occurrences and the severity of consequences, Runway Excursions were more common while Loss of Control In-Flight and Controlled Flight into Terrain events were more severe and often involved fatalities. In Indonesia, Runway Excursions were usually nonfatal and comprised 45% of the occurrences for commercial flights, compared to 34% globally. Further, in this study, weather and Crew Resource Management issues were found to be common contributing factors to the occurrences. Weather was a contributing factor for almost 50% of the occurrences involving Indonesian commercial flights. Adverse weather contributed to Loss of Visual Reference for visual flight operations in mountainous areas, which contributed to the majority of Indonesian fatal accidents. The combination of Indonesian monsoon climate and mountainous weather characteristics appears to provide many risks, mitigation of which may require specialist pilot training, particularly for multicrew aircraft. In identifying the main contributing factors, this study will hopefully provide motivation for changes in training and operations to enhance future aviation safety in Indonesia.

Ontological Foundations of European Coordination Centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems

The European Coordination Centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems develops an information system for reporting aviation occurrences on the European scale. The system makes use of various taxonomies, like the taxonomy of event types, or a taxonomy of descriptive factors. However, the European Coordination Centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems data model and associated taxonomies are complex and difficult to understand, which reduces interpretability of the records. In this paper, the problems European Coordination Centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems users face during occurrence reporting are discussed, as well as subsequent searches in reported occurrences. Next, it is shown how proper conceptual modeling with ontological foundations could leverage the quality of occurrence categorization, and thus better exploitability of the European Coordination Centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems system. The ontological model is demonstrated on the Aviation Vocabulary Explorer, which is a new prototypical tool for exploring European Coordination Centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems.

Usefulness of the Adopted Method for the Number of Aviation Occurrences Prediction

Usefulness of the Adopted Method for the Number of Aviation Occurrences Prediction