ABSTRACT
The paper argues that maintenance-related errors rather than fallibility on the flight deck constitute the largest single human factors problem facing modem aircraft systems. The apparent predominance of flight crew errors among the ‘league tables’ of aircraft accident causes is, it is suggested, an artefact of the way statistical data are compiled and presented. On both a priori and evidential grounds, maintenance-related activities are likely to attract the largest proportion of human factors problems. The evidence for this comes from nuclear power generation and aviation studies. Among maintenance activities, the single largest error class is omissions during reassembly or installation. The paper identifies the features of omission-prone task steps and indicates ways in which this highly prevalent error type can be managed.
