But when a plane does go down, despite all the safety features of modern aircraft and the skill of highly-trained pilots, the flying public wants to know why it happened. In the U. But even after painstaking probes, there isn't always a simple, clear answer to why these catastrophes occur. Instead, plane crashes often result from the interaction of a combination of factors, according to NTSB public affairs officer Keith Holloway.
Coming up with a list of causes is complicated, because different agencies and organizations that track crashes don't always describe them the same way.
They're similar to the categories utilized by PlaneCrashInfo. Here's some information on each of them. Modern aircraft are increasingly technologically sophisticated, and their complexity can sometimes give humans more opportunities to make mistakes.
According to a article in The Conversation, aviation expert Simon Ashley Bennett said in about half of fatal crashes, errors by pilots are the primary cause of crashes [source: Bennett ]. A study of mishaps between and , published in the journal Aviation Space Environmental Medicine in , found that the most common type of mistake was carelessness, such as neglecting to check for hydraulic pressure for landing gear and flaps during a pre-landing checklist.
That accounted for Flawed decisions, such as making an approach to the airport from too high an altitude, accounted for Making miscalculations in dealing with forces acting on the plane accounted for Mishandling wind or runways conditions happened in 7.
One recent example of a crash attributed to mistakes in the cockpit was Asiana Airlines Flight , which struck a seawall at San Francisco International Airport in , causing the deaths of three passengers and numerous injuries to passengers and crew members.
An NTSB investigation determined that "the flight crew mismanaged the airplane's vertical profile during the initial approach, which resulted in the airplane being well above the desired glidepath when it reached the 5 nautical mile point, and this increased the difficulty of achieving a stabilized approach," and made other mistakes as well.
Some experts, however, have questioned whether some errors that are attributed to pilots actually are the result of their inability to overcome other systemic problems in air transportation, such as poor information and time pressure [source: DeAngelis ]. The downside of advanced modern planes is that there's more technology that can break down, leading some to question whether airliners are overengineered [source: Popular Mechanics ]. Roughly 20 percent of crashes are attributable mainly to things that go wrong with the plane's equipment [source: Bennett ].
One particularly horrific example of a malfunctioning plane was TWA Flight , which exploded in midair and crashed off the coast of Long Island in , killing people [source: FAA ]. While some have suspected a terrorist bomb or missile strike was responsible, the NTSB determined otherwise [source: Gray ]. Instead, as the FAA's website explains, "the most likely scenario was a combination of a latent fault of an electronic fuel quantity indicating system component within the fuel tank, combined with a short circuit or other fault outside of the tank.
This scenario would result in a high-energy electrical arc within the fuel tank that could ignite the flammable vapors" [source: FAA ]. Mechanical problems also can be exacerbated by flight crew mistakes. In , for example, one of the engines of a British airliner began to malfunction, according to a report by the Air Accidents Investigation Board.
But the flight crew mistakenly believed that the aircraft's other engine was the one that had been damaged and shut it down instead. They didn't realize their mistake until the aircraft abruptly lost power 2.
That led to a crash that claimed the lives of 47 passengers [source: Air Accidents Investigation Branch ]. Whenever an airliner goes down in a storm, it's natural to wonder if the weather had something to do with it. It turns out, though, that weather is much more of a hazard for small planes, which have more than 20 times the rate of weather-related accidents per , hours flown compared to big jet-powered airliners, and it isn't as big a factor in airline crashes as you might suspect [source: FAA ].
Bennett attributed just 10 percent or so of crashes to bad weather [source: Bennett ]. For airliners, a FAA study found that the most common weather factors contributing to accidents was turbulence, while wind was the second most common.
Airliners didn't have much trouble with other weather conditions, such low visibility and thunderstorms [source: FAA ]. One thunderstorm-related phenomenon that can be very dangerous to airliners is a microburst, a downdraft — a column of sinking air — that occurs within the storm and creates high-speed winds [source: National Weather Service ].
In , for example, a microburst that occurred during the takeoff of Pan Am Flight from New Orleans International Airport caused the plane to crash, killing occupants of the plane, was well as eight people on the ground [source: NTSB ].
Passengers might think of pilot error as a single person's mistakes, but in a team of two or three and occasionally even four flyers, errors are compounded within the structure of a team. These team problems can be exacerbated by cultural factors. This was blamed for Korean Air 's appalling safety record during the s and s. An excessively hierarchical culture left captains ignoring their subordinates, and the subordinates sometimes afraid to speak up when they had noticed something was wrong.
The result was a string of incidents. When Korean Air tackled the cultural issues , improvement was dramatic. There have been CFIT accidents caused by human errors back on the ground. Aeroperu flight crashed into the sea off Peru in after the instruments stopped working and the computer bombarded the crew with a series of baffling emergency messages. A maintenance worker had forgotten to remove tape from "static ports" needed to feed data to the instruments.
At night over the sea, it was impossible for the crew to know their altitude and a wing hit the water. All 70 people on board died. There are other crashes that investigators have laid firmly at the door of mechanical or material failure. The deadliest single-plane crash was in when a Boeing , Japan Airlines flight , crashed into a mountain, killing people. It was caused by mechanical problems - a badly repaired rear pressure bulkhead ruptured leading to total loss of control.
But while there are crashes that are manifestly pilot error or manifestly mechanical failure, most experts emphasise that there's usually a range of interconnected and complicated factors that contribute to any crash. The deadliest ever incident happened when two Boeing s collided on the runway in Tenerife. The accident in which people perished occurred in thick fog with limited communication between the control tower and the two planes.
It shows the chain of events that leads to accidents, says Graham Braithwaite, professor of safety and accident investigation at Cranfield University. If there hadn't been a bomb attack at nearby Gran Canaria, planes would not have been diverted there, crowding the runway. The airport was built in a place that was prone to sea fog, he notes.
The communication system from the control tower to the planes was poor. Sometimes the best people can make the worst mistakes, Braithwaite suggests. The air accident most commonly linked to the current Malaysia Airlines situation happened in June It took days for the wreckage to be found and three years for the mystery to be solved.
The plane had stalled after pilot error. A transcript of the pilots' conversation shows just how confused they had become. But it's possible to see it another way. Zetoony Computing on the Edge by: Robert M. Kamer and Aubrey A. Slack and Peter A. Paolillo and Ellen L. Mitchell and F. Delaney and Kristina M. Kahlon and Aron C. Thomas and Michael P. Neifach and Otieno B. Porzio and Joshua S.
Bryan What a Deal! Ferrante and Nathaniel M. Porzio and Elizabeth A. Bourne and Daniel J. Ferrante and Jana L. Kolarik Judge Leonard P. Lovitch and Rachel E. Ryu and Connor J. Leahy and Stacey A. Fehling and Michael S. Updates from the Fifth Circuit and Yuengert and J.
Cohen and Mark E. Howell and Christi A. Harrison and T. Dobry and Eric J. Article By.
0コメント