Human factors and mishap (Term Paper Sample)

HUMAN FACTORS AND MISHAP
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Human factors play an important role in enhancing the safety of the aviation industry. The flight crews are the one who is responsible for ensuring that the technology employed in the planes runs smoothly. Therefore, when the crew is affected there is likelihood that a given flight would be compromised. One of such human factor which can play a crucial role in affecting the safety of a flight is fatigue. By definition, fatigue refers to extreme tiredness caused by either mental or physical exertion (Wiegmann & Shappell, 2017). Additional both mental and physical exertion can lead to fatigue.
When a person is under fatigue one can easily be distracted and fails to perform major task especially monitoring and control. In case a pilot who is flying a plane is fatigued critical operations and communication from various sources such as ATC might be ignored. Another example would be instances where a pilot does not concentrate on various systems such as the reference speed switch. Furthermore, fatigue can make a pilot to lose coordination which is important while flying a plane. When loss of coordination happens crew members may start to engage in other activities such as unnecessary conversations (Maurino et al, 2017). The distraction can also be fatal especially when a pilot encounters an impending danger. Effective and efficient control of the plane may miss and an accident which would be preventable happens.
Various accidents have occurred caused by human factors. One of such an accident is the Colgan Air 3407 which killed 49 passengers on board, crew members as well as a person living where the plane had collapsed. A closer examination of the accidents revealed that both the captain and first officer were showing signs of fatigue. There was a recording of them yawing prior to the accident. The fatigue caused both the pilot and first officer to ignore basic procedure like adjustment of speed to respond to current weather conditions (Wise et al, 2016).
One of the countermeasures of resolving fatigue is ensuring crew members are in their best physical as well as an emotional state when taking a flight. Various procedures can be followed like ensuring prior to a flight the pilot and the rest of the crew have enough sleep (Hawkins, 2017). Also, a set of minimum hours of resting before embarking on another flight