ABSTRACT
In recent years, there has been a growing recognition that aircraft accidents and incidents are a product of complex, systemic failures, rather than isolated events. The general aviation industry is typically defined as aerial operations, other than those involving high capacity Regular Passenger Transport (RPT) aircraft. In terms of safety, the Department of Transport and Regional Development (1996) indicates that the general aviation industry has a considerably worse record of aircraft accidents and incidents than high-capacity RPT operations. According to Maurino and colleagues, an important part of the analysis of system safety involves the notion of "system health", in which precursors to system failures are examined on a regular basis. Consistent with the approach described by Maurino, the current study involved the development of a computer-based program that was designed to evaluate system health at a large, integrated flight training school.
