A Summary of Unmanned Aircraft Accident/Incident Data: Human Factors Implications

A review and analysis of unmanned aircraft (UA) accident data was conducted to identify important human factors issues related to their use. UA accident data were collected from the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force. The percentage of involvement of human factors issues varied across aircraft from 21% to 68%. For most of the aircraft systems, electromechanical failure was more of a causal factor than human error. One critical finding from an analysis of the data is that each of the fielded systems is very different, leading to different kinds of accidents and different human factors issues. A second finding is that many of the accidents that have occurred could have been anticipated through an analysis of the user interfaces employed and procedures implemented for their use. The current paper summarizes the various human factors issues related to the accident