Air Safety Essay

Submitted By keshflow
Words: 1363
Pages: 6

Air Safety

Now there is roughly one major accident per 1 million

flights with increased air traffic by 2015 there would be one

fatal crash a week. (CNN.com) So in the near future if

stricter regulations are not placed on the people building,

inspecting and flying these planes. Future airplane

crashes will be responsible for killing hundreds of people a

week. Air safety is also important because it effects

America’s economy. American airlines alone logged 9.5 million

scheduled flights in 1997and had 625 passengers. (Gaffney

There are four areas where air safety needs to be

improved. The most important area is human error which has

caused over 70 percent of airline accidents since 1950. Other

important areas of air safety is finding better and more

accurate ways of predicting the weather. Security needs to be

increased in the ways of detecting weapons and explosives.

The final area of air safety that needs to be improved is the

Since 1950 over 70 percent of airline accidents have

been caused by Human error. The reason is simple while all

other aspects of air travel have been improved, human

behavior still has its age-old imperfections. Which is why

the Gore Commission spot lighted the need for more work on

the human side of aviation safety research. “Government and

industry aviation research should emphasize human factors and

training.” The Gore Commission said to Bill Clinton in its

Human error was responsible for the Deaths of 583 people

on March 27 which was the worst commercial air disasters in

history. The disaster happened when KLM and Pan Am pilots did

not see each others airplanes, because of thick fog, and

collided. (Two 747 jumbo jets collide at Tenerife)

Most fatal accidents are caused when perfectly working

aircraft are flown in to the ground which is called

controlled-flight-into-terrain (CFIT). (Gaffney 45) This

phenomenon which has accounted for 25 percent of all

commercial airplane accidents worldwide killing 2,396 people.

Steps to reduce CFIT is to make the installment of enhanced

ground- warning systems within the next three years

mandatory. The systems are designed to decrease human error.

In the early days of airline travel flying was in

adventure. Navigation aids were primitive. Weather reporting

was spotty. Pilots had to rely on steel-nerved flying skills

to deal with weather. In the 1920s radio navigation was one

of the first ways to help deal with bad weather conditions.

Since the beginning of aviation there have been many

crashes caused by bad weather conditions. For example on

March 3,1993 81 people were killed from a condition caused by

bad weather called icing. (Major Airline Disasters) Icing is

when ice forms on air plane wings caused by rain and snow.

There are many different weather conditions that can be

very hazardous to air safety. There is in-flight icing,

which is when icing can collect on airplane surfaces while a

Wind Shear can be a big threat to airplanes taking off

or landing. The edge of a weather system called a front can

throw up a wall of thunderstorms to block an airplanes path.

(Gaffney 57) All are problems that technology can eventually

Airplanes are usually very reliable machines but they

are no better than the people that design and build them.

Mechanical error has caused many deaths and is a problem that

needs to be fixed though more in depth inspections on

airplane parts and higher standards on parts.

There are many airplane accidents caused by mechanical

failure each year. One of the most fatal accidents was on

February 29th 1996 when engine failure caused a Faucett

airlines 747 to crash because of engine failure killing 123

people.(Major Airline Disasters) Which is why new ways of

keeping planes in better condition as they age is necessary.

One major hazard is that airline are increasingly using

two engines