Errors Human Error and General Aviation Accidents: A Comprehensive, Fine-Grained Analysis Using HFACS

A large effort has been expended over the last several decades to lower the military and commercial aviation accident rates. Unfortunately, until recently, a similar effort has not occurred within the general aviation (GA) community even though the total number of accidents is considerably greater. As part of the FAA’s endeavor to better understand the etiology of GA accidents we previously analyzed eleven years (1990-2000) of GA accidents using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS). The findings, though significant, spawned additional questions regarding the nature of aircrew error associated with GA accidents. For instance, how often is each error type the “initiating ” error in the causal chain of events and what are the exact types of errors committed within each error category? This brief report details the efforts made by the University of Illinois and the FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute to address these questions in FY 2003. INTRODUCTION HFACS framework includes 19 causal categories within Reason’s It is generally accepted that like most accidents, those in (1990) four levels of human failure (Figure 1). Unfortunately, a aviation do not happen in isolation. Rather, they are often the complete description of all 19 causal categories is beyond the result of a chain of events often culminating with the unsafe acts scope of this brief report. It is however, available elsewhere of aircrew. Indeed, from Heinrich’s (Heinrich, Peterson, & Roos, (Wiegmann and Shappell, 2003)