Aircraft Accidents

Paper Summary:

This paper explores a 2001 study of aircraft accident indicators, including pilot age, gender, education, flying experience, previous accident involvement and attitudes toward flying. The paper examines the study's methodology and findings in each of these areas before focusing on the role of the pilot's personality on airplane crashes. The paper shows how research indicates that personality is involved in decisions to stick to a flight plan regardless of weather, or abandon it in. The paper also examines whether gain (personal safety) or loss (money, time) is instrumental in those situations and concludes that these decisions do not disprove the function of personality, but rather reinforce it -- especially in light of the equivocal results of simulation experiments designed to test the hypothesis that it is the gain/loss continuum alone that determines whether a pilot will continue or abandon a flight plan in the presence of adverse weather information.

From the Paper:

"Hunter used data obtained in a national survey of pilots c completed in 1994 with the purpose of examining the validity of measure for predicting accidents and those that occurred after. Hunter used those finding to address two issues: "the relationships among the various measures and accident involvement" (Hunger, 2001, p. 509+). The population Hunter had at his disposal was significant; 561,485 active pilots (those who had been issued a valid airman medical certificate in the preceding 25 months) were used to draw 19,657 participants representing a cross-section of private, commercial and airline transport certificate holders. Those participants then filled out an extensive questionnaire, and, while it was not a personality inventory per se, it did contain 27 questions concerning attitudes about flying."

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