Major air disasters: accident investigation as a tool for defining eras in commercial aviation safety culture

Abstract

The air transport evolution has been littered with major air disasters, the occurrence of which has not only had the negative effects inherent to any disaster. Air accident investigation has provided a wealth of knowledge that has advanced the aviation industry and its safety. International Civil Aviation Organization has exercised international regulatory leadership since 1947, developing tools with international cooperation, such as the air accident investigation methodology. ICAO has forged a change in perspective on safety attributions or factors in different historical eras, using this methodology to deepen the understanding of the causes and thereby achieve aviation safety improvement. Authors aimed to analyze, through a detailed study of the world’s worst aviation accidents, their contribution to understanding the details of aviation safety culture. Beyond the technical issues and fatality rates, the necessary analysis is what knowledge researchers have gained from the beginning, exploring the attributions of reports and knowing what diverse factors have predominated in different eras. Descriptive analyzes of air disaster investigation have two objectives: to identify the beginnings of a global safety culture resulting from evolution in operational safety and to relate the different eras to the attributions of air accident investigations.

Keywords

• air accident
• air disaster
• aviation psychology
• aviation safety
• human factors
• International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)