A very normal accident
It was early evening on the 24th September 2022 when an offshore AW139 helicopter inbound to Houma-Terrebonne Airport in Louisiana, USA, declared a mayday. A lot had already happened in the cockpit by the time the co-pilot hit the press to transmit… We take a look at Normal Accident theory in the light of a…
Helicopter human factors in focus
“For no other vehicle is the need for human factors research more critical, or more difficult.” Sandra G. Hart. That’s a bold assertion that I had never heard anyone make before and consequently had never given much consideration to whether or not it might be the case. So let’s unpack that proposition a little by…
The safety dividend of aviation’s professional culture?
How much does an aviator’s own cultural identification with safety have a role in contributing to safety outcomes? Certain professions have strong and distinctive professional cultures. Aviation is one of these. Does a belief in a deep-rooted safety culture underpin how aviators identify as professionals?
Does complacency really cause errors?
Attributing complacency as a cause of human error is as easy as it is lazy. Why?
Towards E-VFR flight: The dawn of mixed reality in the rotary wing cockpit?
How progress in head-mounted display technology could revolutionise critical helicopter missions. Envision a world in which emergency aircraft and their crews can launch in response to medical and other critical missions in almost any flight conditions imaginable. E-VFR (Electronic-VFR) speaks of this future thanks to electronically augmented visual flight which gives a sufficiently enhanced view…
The need for speed? How slowness has a value all of its own.
Human exploits in aviation have always been closely linked to our fascination for speed. We admire speed in its many guises and it remains a marker of achievement in almost any field you care to think of. In aviation, just as in many other walks of life, we often assume the faster the better. We…
Developing resilience to startle and surprise in helicopter operations
Also published in AirMed&Rescue April 2022 edition. https://www.airmedandrescue.com/latest/long-read/developing-resilience-helicopter-operations What should startle and surprise training mean in an applied sense and how should we be approaching it? Do the differences between airline transport flight profiles and helicopter operations mean that we should be looking critically at how to approach the startle and surprise from a rotary…
The automation explosion: examining the human factor fallout
Also published in AirMed&Rescue, Nov 2021 edition. Automation reduces workload, frees attentional resources to focus on other tasks, and is capable of flying the aircraft more accurately than any of us. It is simultaneously a terrible master that exposes many human limitations and appeals to many human weaknesses. As we have bid to reduce crew…
Distributed Situation Awareness
Pretty much everyone in aviation is familiar with the concept of situation awareness. But as research interest in SA grew, the concept expanded from the individual level to how SA might apply in the context of larger and more complex systems. What does distributed SA actually mean? The idea is that SA is held by…
Processing information in flight: Understanding the limits of cognitive capacity in the cockpit.
Hands up if you have ever experienced a mental meltdown, ‘cognitive freeze’, or intense tunnel vision in flight or in training? Most of us will recognise these phenomena happening to us at some point or other. They are intimately related to levels of workload, stress, or perhaps the surprise and startle effect. In CRM training…
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