Aviation / 17
What’s trending in aviation safety? Barry Kirwan shares his thoughts on a recent conference highlighting human factors issues in aviation safety.
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does their own job it’ll all work out is no longer a best-in-class business model. Safety culture was very much back in vogue, with EUROCONTROL and its academic partner London School of Economics leading the way, but there were military aspects too, with a fascinating presentation on safety culture in Afghanistan, where many different countries share air traffic operations in a hostile environment. Wellbeing or the lack of it, is becoming a serious concern, as it can significantly degrade performance. NATS, who also sponsored the conference this year, shared its own approach for instilling emotional resilience in novice controllers, saving the company a small fortune by dramatically reducing the
Barry Kirwan is a Safety Research Coordinator at EUROCONTROL.
IMAGE: ISTOCK
’m heading home from the CIEHF’s excellent conference on ‘Human Factors in Aviation Safety’ in November where 26 presentations were given to attendees from 60 civil and military organisations from 16 countries. So what’s trending in aviation human factors? The first notable trend was an attempt to analyse how people work across system boundaries. Aviation is known as a ‘system-of-systems’, and what connects them and makes them work seamlessly are people. A number of presentations didn’t focus only on controllers or pilots, but the whole gate-to-gate operation including dispatch, ground handlers, baggage handlers, etc. Thinking that if everyone
number of controllers who fail to make it through training. A darker wellbeing aspect mentioned was the mental health of pilots, highlighted via a stirring presentation showing alarming results from a survey of pilots, more than half of whom had experienced feelings of depression in the past twelve months. Following the Germanwings accident and the setting up of a European Aviation Safety Agency task force to determine better mental health measures, a worry is that pilots may fear reporting any symptoms, driving the issue underground. We’re now waiting for the study report to come out. The last main trends of note were neuroscience, which is making a comeback, with several studies measuring brain waves to combat such issues as fatigue, and EUROCONTROL’s involvement in the Future Sky Safety work which is trying to chart the ‘human performance envelope’ for pilots and controllers. Early indications show a healthy appetite for another event next year so watch out for more news from the CIEHF. •
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Aviation Trends__The Ergonomist 17
Jan-Feb 2017 | The Ergonomist
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