IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/reensy/v106y2012icp104-118.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Analysis of trends in aviation maintenance risk: An empirical approach

Author

Listed:
  • Marais, Karen B.
  • Robichaud, Matthew R.

Abstract

Safety is paramount in the airline industry. A significant amount of effort has been devoted to reducing mechanical failures and pilot errors. Recently, more attention has been devoted to the contribution of maintenance to accidents and incidents. This study investigates and quantifies the contribution of maintenance, both in terms of frequency and severity, to passenger airline risk by analyzing three different sources of data from 1999 to 2008: 769 NTSB accident reports, 3242 FAA incident reports, and 7478 FAA records of fines and other legal actions taken against airlines and associated organizations. We analyze several safety related metrics and develop an aviation maintenance risk scorecard that collects these metrics to synthesize a comprehensive track record of maintenance contribution to airline accidents and incidents. We found for example that maintenance-related accidents are approximately 6.5 times more likely to be fatal than accidents in general, and that when fatalities do occur, maintenance accidents result in approximately 3.6 times more fatalities on average. Our analysis of accident trends indicates that this contribution to accident risk has remained fairly constant over the past decade. Our analysis of incidents and FAA fines and legal actions also revealed similar trends. We found that at least 10% of incidents involving mechanical failures such as ruptured hydraulic lines can be attributed to maintenance, suggesting that there may be issues surrounding both the design of and compliance with maintenance plans. Similarly 36% of FAA fines and legal actions involve inadequate maintenance, with recent years showing a decline to about 20%, which may be a reflection of improved maintenance practices. Our results can aid industry and government in focusing resources to continue improving aviation safety.

Suggested Citation

  • Marais, Karen B. & Robichaud, Matthew R., 2012. "Analysis of trends in aviation maintenance risk: An empirical approach," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 104-118.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:reensy:v:106:y:2012:i:c:p:104-118
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2012.06.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0951832012001081
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ress.2012.06.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Saleh, J.H. & Marais, K.B. & Bakolas, E. & Cowlagi, R.V., 2010. "Highlights from the literature on accident causation and system safety: Review of major ideas, recent contributions, and challenges," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 95(11), pages 1105-1116.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Churchwell, Jared S. & Zhang, Katherine S. & Saleh, Joseph H., 2018. "Epidemiology of helicopter accidents: Trends, rates, and covariates," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 373-384.
    2. Oster, Clinton V. & Strong, John S. & Zorn, C. Kurt, 2013. "Analyzing aviation safety: Problems, challenges, opportunities," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 148-164.
    3. Ghaleb, Mageed & Taghipour, Sharareh, 2022. "Assessing the impact of maintenance practices on asset's sustainability," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    4. Miriam Andrejiova & Anna Grincova & Daniela Marasova & Peter Koščák, 2021. "Civil Aviation Occurrences in Slovakia and Their Evaluation Using Statistical Methods," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-17, May.
    5. Tsagkas, Vassilis & Nathanael, Dimitris & Marmaras, Nicolas, 2014. "A pragmatic mapping of factors behind deviating acts in aircraft maintenance," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 106-114.
    6. Cankaya, Burak & Topuz, Kazim & Delen, Dursun & Glassman, Aaron, 2023. "Evidence-based managerial decision-making with machine learning: The case of Bayesian inference in aviation incidents," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Churchwell, Jared S. & Zhang, Katherine S. & Saleh, Joseph H., 2018. "Epidemiology of helicopter accidents: Trends, rates, and covariates," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 373-384.
    2. Konstandinidou, Myrto & Nivolianitou, Zoe & Kefalogianni, Eirini & Caroni, Chrys, 2011. "In-depth analysis of the causal factors of incidents reported in the Greek petrochemical industry," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 1448-1455.
    3. Faiella, Giuliana & Parand, Anam & Franklin, Bryony Dean & Chana, Prem & Cesarelli, Mario & Stanton, Neville A. & Sevdalis, Nick, 2018. "Expanding healthcare failure mode and effect analysis: A composite proactive risk analysis approach," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 117-126.
    4. Saleh, Joseph H. & Saltmarsh, Elizabeth A. & Favarò, Francesca M. & Brevault, Loïc, 2013. "Accident precursors, near misses, and warning signs: Critical review and formal definitions within the framework of Discrete Event Systems," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 148-154.
    5. Zhou, Di & Zhuang, Xiao & Zuo, Hongfu & Cai, Jing & Zhao, Xufeng & Xiang, Jiawei, 2022. "A model fusion strategy for identifying aircraft risk using CNN and Att-BiLSTM," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    6. J. S. Busby & A. M. Collins, 2014. "Organizational Sensemaking About Risk Controls: The Case of Offshore Hydrocarbons Production," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(9), pages 1738-1752, September.
    7. Wu, Chao & Huang, Lang, 2019. "A new accident causation model based on information flow and its application in Tianjin Port fire and explosion accident," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 73-85.
    8. Zhang, Weibin & Feng, Xinyu & Goerlandt, Floris & Liu, Qing, 2020. "Towards a Convolutional Neural Network model for classifying regional ship collision risk levels for waterway risk analysis," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    9. Kontogiannis, Tom & Malakis, Stathis, 2012. "A systemic analysis of patterns of organizational breakdowns in accidents: A case from Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) operations," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 193-208.
    10. Raghvendra V. Cowlagi & Joseph H. Saleh, 2013. "Coordinability and Consistency in Accident Causation and Prevention: Formal System Theoretic Concepts for Safety in Multilevel Systems," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(3), pages 420-433, March.
    11. Bakolas, Efstathios & Saleh, Joseph H., 2011. "Augmenting defense-in-depth with the concepts of observability and diagnosability from Control Theory and Discrete Event Systems," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 184-193.
    12. Favarò, Francesca M. & Saleh, Joseph H., 2016. "Toward risk assessment 2.0: Safety supervisory control and model-based hazard monitoring for risk-informed safety interventions," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 316-330.
    13. Foreman, Veronica L. & Favaró, Francesca M. & Saleh, Joseph H. & Johnson, Christopher W., 2015. "Software in military aviation and drone mishaps: Analysis and recommendations for the investigation process," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 101-111.
    14. Park, Jinkyun & Jung, Wondea, 2015. "A systematic framework to investigate the coverage of abnormal operating procedures in nuclear power plants," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 21-30.
    15. Tsagkas, Vassilis & Nathanael, Dimitris & Marmaras, Nicolas, 2014. "A pragmatic mapping of factors behind deviating acts in aircraft maintenance," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 106-114.
    16. Rose, Rodrigo L. & Puranik, Tejas G. & Mavris, Dimitri N. & Rao, Arjun H., 2022. "Application of structural topic modeling to aviation safety data," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    17. Ferjencik, Milos, 2014. "IPICA_Lite—Improvements to root cause analysis," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 1-13.
    18. Miriam Andrejiova & Anna Grincova & Daniela Marasova & Peter Koščák, 2021. "Civil Aviation Occurrences in Slovakia and Their Evaluation Using Statistical Methods," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-17, May.
    19. Saleh, Joseph H. & Pendley, Cynthia C., 2012. "From learning from accidents to teaching about accident causation and prevention: Multidisciplinary education and safety literacy for all engineering students," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 105-113.
    20. Luo, Pengcheng & Hu, Yang, 2013. "System risk evolution analysis and risk critical event identification based on event sequence diagram," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 36-44.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:reensy:v:106:y:2012:i:c:p:104-118. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/reliability-engineering-and-system-safety .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.