Critical Analysis
On August 27th, 2006, Comair flight 5191 crashed after it left the Lexington Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, KY. The flying machine manoeuvred out dully and afterwards abruptly continued to withdraw from runway 26 instead of the more extended air bearer runway 22. The aeroplane, at that point, slammed into trees and smashed. There was a huge post-crash fire inundating the majority of the flying machine, and 49 of the 50 travellers and team passed on. The goal of any mishap examination is to discover why a specific amalgamation of conditions, occasions, and activities prompted the particular continuation or, rather, result (Hollnagel, 2004). The National Transportation Safety Board conducted an investigation and found several underlying critical issues that led to the plane crash. Human factors, according to aviation experts, are the major contributors to aeroplane crashes, the use of the wrong runway, and other factors, including the short distance between the airport terminal and the track, poor lighting systems, and fatigue.
Problem Analysis
Human factors include human behaviour, ignoring simple rules and errors made by humans working in the airport. For example, during the flight, the flight information recorder demonstrated that the guiding team set the going to 227 degrees, which related to the right runway being runway 22 (NTSB, 2007). When the controllers guided the pilots to runway 22, the group reacted, “taxi two” (NTSB 2007). Both of these tasks were taken care of unequivocally. The pilots situated their heading bug for the right runway, and doing this ought to have allowed the chance to substantiate and utilize the right runway for the departure. Be that as it may, the pilots did not taxi the plane onto runway 22. Rather, the pilots navigated onto runway 26, which did not meet the runway length required for this specific plane to take off securely, subsequently prompting the crash. The wrong runway was the essential driver of the plane crash; this was majorly a result of poor coordination and having a happy crew. An excellent, effective team should have excellent communication skills and the ability to follow instructions. A team operates on the concept of collectivism, not individualism.
A short distance between the airport terminal and the runway is another probable cause that I agree with, and that led to the crash of Comair flight 5191. To add unto this a short distance between the terminal and the runway requisites flight crews to accomplish the same number of checklist items in a lightening timeframe and requisites more heads-down time during a taxi. Quite a number of the event reports revealed that the flight crew team were rushing to finish their checklists or to hasten the departures leaving some crucial bits of takeoff unattended to, this could also lead to the crash of the plane.
The inadequate lighting system in the airport is also another factor I agree with. At the point when the pilots were getting ready to remove the cockpit, the voice recorder demonstrated that the pilots were discussing the nonattendance of lights on the runway. In this way, they couldn’t understand they were going down the wrong runway, which at that point influenced it to slam into trees and smash.
Exhaustion could have been a factor in this mischance by assessing the preconditions that could be assigned for the event of an exhausted state and testing the idea of the pilots’ shown execution lacks (Nelson, 2008). Potential expressions that can prompt the development of an exhaustive condition include long-lasting sleep restriction and terrible sleep loss. Limiting sleep for even 2 hours has always led to a decline in the performance of simple cognitive tasks. It is evident in the report by the NTSB that the flight crew obtained little sleep, thus leading to a lowered production of cognitive functions that led to the aeroplane crash.
Recommendations
Rescheduling the workloads of Air Traffic Controllers to ensure they receive more sleep adds to the fact that the flight crew should be given enough time to sleep and rest to boost their overall input-output cognitive performance to avoid simple mistakes they tend to incur when tired. This would reduce the human errors. Secondly, the human factors study in aviation schools should be overemphasized, and the pass mark for the same should also be increased as it is the primary cause of all plane accidents. Finally, there should be a location warning system installed in a cockpit that will inform pilots when they are headed on the wrong runway to avoid accidents that might occur.
References
Nelson, P. S. (2008). A STAMP analysis of the LEX COMAIR 5191 accident. Master’s thesis, Lund.
Hollnagel, E., Pruchnicki, S., Woltjer, R., & Etcher, S. (2008, April). Analysis of Comair flight 5191 with the functional resonance accident model. In 8th International Symposium of the Australian Aviation Psychology Association (pp. 8-pages).
Flight, C. (2006). 5191 Bombardier CL-600-2B19. N431CA, Lexington, Kentucky.
