MAINTENANCE ERRORS
It's fairly well-known that most accidents are human error related, at least in part. And in aviation, because pilots are always first to arrive at the scene of an accident, it is generally a maxim that to some degree, pilot error is normally involved - to some degree. It may not necessarily be the primary cause but it could be that a pilot team failed to cope with the circumstances that they were suddenly handed. On the other hand, one is not to know whether (or to what degree) their mount let them down. We rarely hear much about the success stories when a pilot does manage to accommodate a systems or hardware failure and retrieve the situation. And then of course there are the circumstances where a scenario is complicated by weather, fuel shortages, pilot fatigue, terrorism, passenger rage or inexperience.
But what about Maintenance Error? Since the end of the Cold War the pool of Air Force trained technicians around the World has dried up and expertise is becoming a little harder to come by. To what degree will Maintenance Error become a more significant factor in the future? And when it is a materiel failure such as faulty (or deficient) wiring, will it ever be apparent? Is that designated maint error or designer error? Or is there (should there be?) another category of error? Perhaps we could call it regulatory error.
It's fairly well-known that most accidents are human error related, at least in part. And in aviation, because pilots are always first to arrive at the scene of an accident, it is generally a maxim that to some degree, pilot error is normally involved - to some degree. It may not necessarily be the primary cause but it could be that a pilot team failed to cope with the circumstances that they were suddenly handed. On the other hand, one is not to know whether (or to what degree) their mount let them down. We rarely hear much about the success stories when a pilot does manage to accommodate a systems or hardware failure and retrieve the situation. And then of course there are the circumstances where a scenario is complicated by weather, fuel shortages, pilot fatigue, terrorism, passenger rage or inexperience.
But what about Maintenance Error? Since the end of the Cold War the pool of Air Force trained technicians around the World has dried up and expertise is becoming a little harder to come by. To what degree will Maintenance Error become a more significant factor in the future? And when it is a materiel failure such as faulty (or deficient) wiring, will it ever be apparent? Is that designated maint error or designer error? Or is there (should there be?) another category of error? Perhaps we could call it regulatory error.
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