1 Background and Introduction

Air transport is the safest way to travel. Global safety standards and a harmonised approach formulated cooperatively by governments, regulators, manufacturers, industry associations and operators have been successful in reducing the rate of incidents and accidents. The efforts, however, cannot stop. In a constantly changing world, aviation operations must continue to adapt so that they adequately address emerging issues and apply lessons learned to strengthen the industry’s defenses against accidents.

Since human error is a major contributor to aviation incidents and accidents, human factors must be an important focus of any aviation safety strategy. Whether for off-line safety analysis or within real-time operations, there is always a need to improve understanding of human performance in an operational context. Human factors provides a universal basis to tie all the ingredients of risk management together into a meaningful whole.