Havacılık ve Uzay Teknolojileri Dergisi (Jan 2020)
The Analysis of Hot-Air Balloon Accidents by Human Factor Analysis and Classification System
Abstract
Although hot-air balloon accidents are infrequent with respect to the total number of flights, the rate of hot-air balloon accidents has shown a significant increase over the past two decades. The aim of this study is to classify previously identified causal factors of hot-air balloon accidents. 103 NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) accident reports were analyzed, and causal factors of hot-air balloon accidents were classified by using HFACS (Human Factors Analyzing and Classification System) as a framework. The relative importance of contributing factors to hot-air balloon accidents was established. We found that environmental factors were the most important contributing factors, following skill-based errors as the second-highest contributing factors. Our results will contribute to countermeasures to prevent future reoccurrences of the hot air balloon accidents and incidents and may provide an insight into high-risk factors which are associated with the severity of the balloon crashes.
