Weather-Related Decision Errors: Differences across Flight Types

Aviation incidents involving poor weather may be related to cognitive and contextual factors that lead pilots to continue with flights in the face of cues suggesting that doing so could be hazardous (i.e., commit plan continuation errors or PCE). To test this, 276 ASRS incident reports involving in-flight encounters with weather were analyzed. Part 91, 135 and 121 operations were found to differ significantly in their relative frequency of commission of PCEs. Factors such as hours of pilot experience, poor visibility, and crew conflict were related to the performance of a PCE. Different factors were related to PCEs committed within the three Part operations

Understanding of Aviation Safety Pictograms among Respondents from Europe and the U.S.

Conveying safety information to aircraft passengers is an important task for the designers of aircraft passenger safety information cards. Since the information must be understood by all passengers, regardless of native language or nationality, many designers use pictorial representations that are considered \u27culture free.\u27 The current study investigated the comprehension of 13 pictograms from a sample of actual safety cards among participants from four language groups in Europe and the U.S. One-hundred-and-fifty students whose native languages were English (British and U.S.), French, or German, respectively, interpreted 13 pictograms. From their responses, three main conclusions can be drawn: 1. Conveying aviation safety information by pictorial means appears to be largely effective, as indicated by general comprehension levels above 85%. 2. While passengers may get the \u27essence\u27 of a particular pictogram, it is often difficult for them to recognize specific details. 3. There are relatively small differences in the comprehension levels between participants from different language groups, pointing towards the \u27universality\u27 of pictograms in conveying safety information. Future research needs to focus on identifying exactly which features of pictograms are most effective in conveying safety information, without introducing cultural or language biases