ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the underlying factors that may help to contribute to errors being made on the flight deck as a function of the pilot's tools, tasks, and the organizational context. The pilot of a modern commercial aircraft is no longer a "hands-on" stick and rudder flyer: they are a manager of flight crew and of complex, highly-automated aircraft systems. Formal error identification techniques implicitly consider both the design of the flight deck interfaces and the procedures required to operate them simultaneously. Reason's model of human error posited that active failures and latent failures serve to combine together with other factors to breach a system's defenses. Culture helps to fashion a complex framework of national, organizational and professional attitudes and values within which groups and individuals function. Cultures can be divided into different levels; for example, families, organizations, professions, regions, and countries.
