Maintenance human factors: Learning from errors to improve systems

Maintenance errors can have a significant impact on the safety and financial performance of airline operations. It has been estimated that an air turnback of a Boeing 747 with the need to accommodate passengers overnight can cost in the order of $250 000 (Innes 1998). While no fi.rm figures are available, Marx (1998) has estimated that in the US, maintenance error may cost airlines one billion US dollars per year.