2016年4月10日星期日

NTSB Most Wanted List 2016

1.   Prevent loss of control in flight
2.   Fatigue relayed accident
3.   Medical fitness
4.   Reducing distractions
5.   Cockpit image recorder

According to my research, I have came out with the ranking above, I ranked prevent loss of control in flight at the top is because this is the reason that is directly resulting in fatal accident, however other reasons only indirectly causes fatal accident. If the pilot could not prevent the plane from stall or recover stall condition, he/she would not able to react correctly and putting everyone’s life in danger. According to my reading, this is the reason causes most fatal in an accident, pilot suppose to have ability to recover from stall, if they could not recover the plane in a stall condition then they should receive more training. (Bellamy III , 2016)



I ranked fatigue at the second place, because there are several fatal accident are directly caused by fatigue and fatigue will affect the judge and decision making process of an pilot during emergency situation. And I believe that fatigue is still happens within aviation industry, epically with Cargo industry and smaller operator which on call policies which give pilot very limited time to prepare before they notice that they have a trip.

I ranked medical fitness at 3rd place because medical fitness became an important issue after German wing accident, because medical fitness is not measuring both physically and mentally. And it is very difficult for pilot to self-reporting their mental health condition.

I ranked reducing distraction as 4th because I do think most companies have strict policy regarding using personal electronic device during flight, and most of the company’s device for example ipads could be very helpful to pilots if they using it correctly. And I do believe most of the professional pilot will have ability to judge when could be the great time to use their personal devices.

I ranked cockpit image recorder at last is because there are a lot of argument regarding if it is appropriate to put image recorder in the cockpit. I do think it is not suppose to belong to the list. There is a lot of argument about the image recorder, firstly the privacy issues, pilots claim that the cameras in the cockpit invade their privacy and there are possibility of miss-using and leak to the public. Also, some pilots believe that adding a camera will create additional stress and affect their decision making process, they feel like there are people watching them while they are making every decisions. Also they feel like the purpose I overlapping with current cockpit voice and flight data recorder which can provide same information that can provided by the image recorder.( Davis, 2014)

Dec 11, 2013 Asiana Airlines flight OZ214 crashed in San Francisco airport, the investigation shows that both of the pilots are significantly lack of experience of operating the 777 aircraft manually, most of their flight hours are operating the plane by auto pilot. I do think NTSB should start making rules for Operators to make sure their pilots are fully trained on how to manually land a plane to prevent from similar accident happening as auto pilot are taking over most part of the flight. (Martinez, 2014)

I do think FAA will be taking action on fatigue because it is a very serious problem, which caused a lot of accident, and there are still a lot of violation and companies with bad scheduling policies especially in cargo industry. However fatigue is not only happening within pilots. Fatigue of controller, maintenance technician might also cause accident. FAA should definitely start taking actions to prevent operating under fatigue. 

Bellamy, W., III. (2016, January 14). NTSB's 5 Most Wanted Aviation Safety Improvements in 2016 retrieved from: http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/commercial/NTSBs-5-Most-Wanted-Aviation-Safety-Improvements-in-2016_86948.html#.Vwr8cRIrImJ

Davies, A. (n.d.). Why pilots dislike being on cockpit cam. Retrieved from http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/11/mh370-cockpit-camera


Martinez, M. (n.d.). Asiana Flight 214 Crash Anniversary. Retrieved 2016, from http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/06/us/california-asiana-plane-crash-anniversary/

2 条评论:

  1. When it comes to distractions in the cockpit, I think you put a lot of trust in the pilots. Like you said are the pilots using there tablets for the right reasons, we might never know unless they are monitored by the company. But who's not to say they don't use their personal devices, and if both pilots want to use them they are not going to tell on themselves and therefore they are flying distracted. Not all pilots will act this way, so like you said we have to hope the pilots act professionally.

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  2. I like your list a lot. If I had to change mine around it would go in this order. I have medical fitness as a listed as a top priority because of the great danger it leaves for everyone.

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