Aviation safety
[3] On December 14, 1903, the Wright Brothers conducted a test flight of their powered airplane from slope of Big Kill Devil Hill in North Carolina.
[4] Only three days later, on December 17, 1903, Wilbur's brother, Orville Wright, would fly the airplane for the world's first powered, sustained, and controlled heavier-than-air flight in history.
[21] Since 1997, the number of fatal air accidents has been no more than 1 for every 2,000,000,000 person-miles[c] flown,[citation needed] and thus is one of the safest modes of transportation when measured by distance traveled.
[22] Because the above figures are focused on providing a perspective to the realm of everyday transportation, air travel is taken to include only standard civil passenger aviation, as offered commercially to the general public.
Two months later, American Airlines Flight 587 crashed in New York City, killing 265 people, including 5 on the ground, causing 2001 to show a very high fatality rate.
Even so, the rate that year including the attacks (estimated here to be about 4 deaths per billion person-miles), is safe compared to some other forms of transport when measured by distance traveled.
[27] Gyrocopters were developed by Juan de la Cierva to avoid stall and spin accidents, and for that invented cyclic and collective controls used by helicopters.
[28] Use of the lighthouses has declined with the advent of radio navigation aids such as non-directional beacon (NDB), VHF omnidirectional range (VOR), and distance measuring equipment (DME).
The March 1931 wooden wing failure of a Transcontinental & Western Air Fokker F-10 carrying Knute Rockne, coach of the University of Notre Dame's football team, reinforced all-metal airframes and led to a more formal accident investigation system.
Unapproved parts include inferior counterfeits, those used beyond their time limits, those that were previously approved but not properly returned to service, those with fraudulent labels, production overruns that were not sold with the agency's permission, and those that are untraceable.
[37][38][39][40] The crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901 was a result of receiving and interpreting incorrect coordinates, which caused the pilots to inadvertently fly into a mountain.
Between 1964 and 1985, wind shear directly caused or contributed to 26 major civil transport aircraft accidents in the U.S. that led to 620 deaths and 200 injuries.
Examples of failure of aircraft structures caused by metal fatigue include the de Havilland Comet accidents (1950s) and Aloha Airlines Flight 243 (1988).
At one time, fire fighting foam paths were laid down before an emergency landing, but the practice was considered only marginally effective, and concerns about the depletion of firefighting capability due to pre-foaming led the United States FAA to withdraw its recommendation in 1987.
The outcome of an ingestion event and whether it causes an accident, be it on a small fast plane, such as military jet fighters, or a large transport, depends on the number and weight of birds and where they strike the fan blade span or the nose cone.
The highest risk of a bird strike occurs during takeoff and landing in the vicinity of airports, and during low-level flying, for example by military aircraft, crop dusters and helicopters.
Passive countermeasures involve sensible[clarification needed] land-use management, avoiding conditions attracting flocks of birds to the area (e.g. landfills).
Another tactic found effective is to let the grass at the airfield grow taller (to approximately 12 inches or 30 centimetres) as some species of birds won't land if they cannot see one another.
[54] [55] Much progress in applying human factors analysis to improving aviation safety was made around the time of World War II by such pioneers as Paul Fitts and Alphonse Chapanis.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) defines fatigue as "A physiological state of reduced mental or physical performance capability resulting from sleep loss or extended wakefulness, circadian phase, or workload.
[61] At least one fatal airliner accident involving drunk pilots occurred when Aero Flight 311 crashed at Kvevlax, Finland, killing all 25 on board in 1961.
The official investigation found the mentally ill captain had attempted suicide by placing the inboard engines into reverse thrust, while the aircraft was close to the runway.
On 24 March 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525 (an Airbus A320-200) crashed 100 kilometres (62 miles) north-west of Nice, in the French Alps, after a constant descent that began one minute after the last routine contact with air traffic control, and shortly after the aircraft had reached its assigned cruise altitude.
Three days after the incident, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued a temporary recommendation for airlines to ensure that at least two crew members, including at least one pilot, are in the cockpit at all times of the flight.
Inaction, omission, failure to act as required, willful disregard of safety procedures, disdain for rules, and unjustifiable risk-taking by pilots have also led to accidents and incidents.
One method of substituting for the 300 metres (1,000 ft) at the end of a runway for airports in congested areas is to install an engineered materials arrestor system (EMAS).
According to studies, 90 seconds is the time needed to evacuate before the plane starts burning, before there can be a very large fire or explosions, or before fumes fill the cabin.
[50][77] Changes such as using new materials for seat fabric and insulation has given between 40 and 60 additional seconds to people on board to evacuate before the cabin gets filled with fire and potential deadly fumes.
[51] Since 1995, the number of major civil aircraft accidents caused by wind shear has dropped to approximately one every ten years, due to the mandated on-board detection as well as the addition of Doppler weather radar units on the ground (NEXRAD).
[84] While the accident rate is very low, to ensure they do not rise with the air transport growth, experts recommend creating a robust culture of collecting information from employees without blame.
