AN ASSESSMENT OF FLIGHT VARIABLES AFFECTING CIVIL AVIATION ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS

Abstract

Flight safety has been an important topic for both academia and the industry. Aviation experts and authorities, as well as commercial airline administrators, constantly seek to improve flight safety. Researchers, on the other hand, have tried to model avionic fatalities and suggest improvements or upgrades in flight systems to reduce risk. One approach has been to use data from past accidents and incidents to capture and model the relationship between the different factors involved in each event. However, some important factors are not included in the databases maintained by entities such as the National Transportation Safety Board. This study divides the factors involved into dependent variables (DVs) and independent variables (IVs). IVs include flight factors—for instance, weather and pilotrelated data. DVs report the magnitude of the incident/accident, such as the number of casualties. This research will improve existing databases—first, by adding variables, and second, by using multivariate statistical analysis to assess the effect each group of IVs has on correlations between flight factors and accident/incident-magnitude factors. Findings demonstrate that pilot-related factors exert the most influence on the correlation between the two categories. Our findings on the significance of factors or groups of factors will assist researchers, policy makers, flight managers, and flight-crew schedulers in their efforts to increase flight safety.