Accidents in Aviation: Experimental Design, Variables Amenable to Statistical Analysis

Accidents in Aviation
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Accidents in Aviation
Introduction
The correlations of pilot’s error or mistake with weather conditions and kind of flight operations have been widely documented. Nonetheless, the association between pilot error and pilot characteristics is not well known or clear. The purpose of the present study is to investigate whether or not the age of the pilot is linked to the patterns, occurrence and frequency of pilot’s error in air-taxi airplane accidents. The source of the dataset includes reports from the National Transportation Safety Board for airplane accidents that involve non-scheduled operations commonly referred to as air taxis in America from the year 1993 until the year 2012. These investigation reports would be reviewed for the purpose of identifying pilot error in addition to other contributing factors. Chi-Square tests are used to analyze circumstances of the airplane crashes and the type of pilot error in relation to age of the pilot.
Research question and hypothesis
Researchers who have studied pilots have reported that age-related declines are mostly restricted to domain-independent cognitive functions for instance psychomotor skills and memory capacity. Li, Baker and Grabowski (2011) noted that domain-independent cognitive functions which relate to flight tasks directly, for instance landing, takeoff, tracking, as well as decision making are in fact less sensitive to effects of aging. Some of the flight-related tasks which are known to decline as the age of the pilot continues to advance include time-sharing efficiency in addition to verbal communication. In comparison to younger pilots, pilots who are much older are inclined to perform worse in implementing fast spoken and long air control commands and in performing multiple tasks under conditions that demand increased attention (Taylor et al., 2010).
At present, it is not very clear whether the traits and occurrence of pilot error differ according to the age of the pilot, although it is possible that at various phases of cognitive ageing, a pilot might actually have different inclination to error and make various sorts of errors (Baker et al., 2010). It is notable that errors that pilots make have been acknowledged as a factor that contributes to 69 percent of commercial aviation plane accidents and 86 percent of general aviation plane accidents. Nonetheless, comparatively little is documented with regard to age-related variations in error made by pilots (Robert, 2010). Therefore, this study seeks to delve into the correlation between pilot error and pilot age in a number of air-taxi aviation accidents believed as being very likely to have been as a result of pilot error.
In this study, the research question is as follows:
What is the association between age of a pilot with the patterns and occurrence of pilot error in air-taxi aviation accidents?
The hypotheses are follows:
H1: there is a relationship between age of a pilot with the patterns and occurrence of pilot error in air-taxi aviation accidents.
H0: there is no relationship between age of a pilot with the patterns and occurrence of pilot error in air-taxi aviation accidents.
Testing hypothesis entails the careful construction of 2 statements: the alternative hypothesis and null hypothesis. The null hypothesis H0 essentially reflects that there would be no observed effect for the experiment. In this study, the null hypothesis is what the researcher attempts to get evidence against in the hypothesis test. The researcher hopes to find a small enough p-value which is lower compared to the level of significance alpha and is justified to reject the null hypothesis. Conversely, if the p-value is found to be greater compared to the alpha, then the null hypothesis would not be rejected (Robert, 2010). If the null hypothesis is not rejected, the researcher would be careful in stating what this actually denotes. Not rejecting the null hypothesis does not necessarily imply that the statement is factual.
In this study, the alternate hypothesis H1 basically reflects that there would be an observed effect for the experiment. This alternative hypothesis is what the researcher is trying to show indirectly by using the hypothesis test. If the researcher rejects the null hypothesis, then the alternative hypothesis would be accepted. On the other hand, if the researcher does not reject the null hypothesis, then the alternative hypothesis would not be accepted.
Experimental design
This research is essentially a case series analysis of data for air-taxi plane accidents that were documented by the NTSB from the year 1993 to the year 2012. The data system of the National Transportation Safety Board is where the investigation reports on every aviation plane accident that occur in America are stored. It is worth mentioning that the National Transportation Safety Board is an autonomous government agency whose main role is to investigate reports on every civil aviation accident in the United States in addition to significant disasters that occur in other transportation modes (National Transportation Safety Board, 2015).
Investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board are carried out with the purpose of determining the likely cause of the plane accident and to give any suggestions that would help to improve civil aviation safety. According to the government of the United States, a civil aviation accident refers to an incidence that is linked to the operation of a plane wherein an individual suffers major injury or death, or where the airplane gets severely damaged such that the damaged parts necessitate significant replacement or repair (Weigmann & Shappell, 2014).
The procedures which are used to notify, investigate, and report aviation accidents are specified comprehensively by the government of the United States. The collected data from the investigation are recoded with the use of NTSB Form 6120.4, which is also known as the standard Factual Report Aviation form. This form is basically a written narrative that describes the circumstances, contributing factors, conditions, likely causes, and facts that pertain to the aviation accident (National Transportation Safety Board, 2015). A factor is understood as any condition which exacerbated or intensified the development of the aviation accident sequence; that is, it made the aviation accident more probable to occur or more severe. A cause refers to any condition which played a key role in the occurrence of the aviation accident; that is, without it, the accident would certainly not have taken place (Shappell et al., 2012).
Data obtained from NTSB Form 6120.4 for all air-taxi aviation accidents that took place from the year 1993 to the year 2012 were reviewed extensively. The type of aviation accident, p...