The Symposium was really worth attending and it was probably the most successful of the 14 that were organised in the previous years. The number of delegates (330 from many countries) was not the only indication. There was an excellent selection of speakers, 28 in total. They were representatives of the Authorities, (ICAO, CAA, JAA, FAA, Transport Canada), Accident Investigation Bodies (AAIB, NTSB, ATSB), Airlines (Britannia, Delta Airlines) as well as Academics/Researchers (such as J.Reason, W. Johnson). It is unfortunate though that there was no speaker representing the workforce (e.g. union rep), something that I mentioned to the organisers. I hope we will see such representation in the next symposium, which is scheduled for the 2-4 April 2002 in San Francisco and hosted by the FAA.

As the theme of the Symposium stated, the effort was to provide "Practical solutions for a complex world". Although some of the inputs were far from this effort, in general the participants left the symposium with a lot of useful ready to use tools and information.

The ICAO presentation was delivered by its Safety and Human Factors Coordinator Capt. Dan Maurino. His remarkable presentation delivered both surprise and satisfaction as it was indicated that ICAO had a very broad, practical and realistic view on human factors. In one of his approaches he mentioned that in an aviation system we should try to keep the balance between safety and production. One of the reasons that this balance is not achieved is that training delivered is not realistic being only safety oriented whereas production is not considered. Referring to deviating from procedures as one of the main incident causes he stated that we should try to introduce "deviation management’ rather than dealing with the deviator himself. One of the themes that he used was that ‘only humans can create safety’. Although Dan Marino and myself have communicated in the past through e-mail, during the symposium I had the chance to talk with him on HF issues and introduce AEI and ITF.

The presentation of Jean Marc Cluzeau, the Chairman of the JAA Maintenance HF Working Group, was well received, as there was a great interest from the participants to be informed about the European regulatory effort. Other speakers as well as participants expressed their satisfaction of the work prepared by the Working Group. J.M.Cluzeau outlined the work of the Working Group indicating his satisfaction that the proposed JAR-145 NPA-12 was well received by the members of the MST (the JAA Maintenance Sectorial Team). I had the chance to extensively discuss with him the latest developments around the NPA-12.

Kathy Abbott, a well known researcher and HF expert, of the FAA indicated that in a work environment there are several forces influencing Human Factors:

- Economic

- Operational

- Technological

- Social/Political

Giving a perspective of current role of the human in aviation safety she stated the following:

- Two thirds to three quarters of all accidents have human error cited as a primary factor

- Changes in technology will not alter this fact

- Every change brings risk

- We will continue to rely on the human for safety, efficiency, and effectiveness

Hazel Courteney from the CAA, who is also the chairperson of the JAA Human Factors Steering Group (HFStG), delivered a presentation on ‘Human Centred Design for Maintenance’. During the last meeting of the HFStG I requested from the Group to address the need to indicate what is the contribution of maintenance to aviation accidents and incidents and if there is a increasing trend to this contribution. As Hazel told me during the conference she already took some action herself on the matter and she presented her initial findings during her presentation. She specifically stated that: "The role of errors in maintenance has attracted increasing attention in the recent years. It is difficult to obtain a comprehensive picture of risk trends worldwide, but UK CAA statistics indicate a continuing rise in the number of reportable maintenance errors per million flights. Such a rise will be compounded by increasing traffic to make absolute numbers of errors show an accelerated trend".

Alan Hobbs from the Australian Transport Safety Board presented the results of a large survey/analysis that he contacted based on 619 aircraft maintenance occurrences in Australia. 96% of the occurrences resulted in whole or in part from human actions. One of the presented tables was the one indicating the contributing factors the most common of which were: Pressure, Equipment, Training, and Fatigue.

Bernard Newton, Technical Director of Britannia Airways titled his presentation "A Practical Approach to Human Factors in Maintenance – a Board Member’s view"’. Britannia has been one of the pioneers in the UK in the field of HF in maintenance. He presented a ‘success story’ of HF. One of the main reasons of success was the actual support that this HF effort had from the company board. Emphasizing also the company commitment to safety he stated that: " I would not expect any aircraft to be dispatched that is less than fully airworthy. If it doesn’t comply, it stays on the ground". He ended his presentation with the following: "You may be able to tell me that I am passionate about human factors, and I truly believe that the practical approach expressed in a way that staff can readily understand will provide a step change in airworthiness – brought about by enhanced understanding and awareness of all the constituent parts of human factors, knowing that each of us can make the difference".

One of the Interactive Sessions was on Fatigue and Shiftwork. All three organizing Authorities (FAA, TC and CAA) have a currently running research on identifying the extend of the issue and possible solutions. Jean Watson from the FAA reported on their current study the data of which is collected by a special equipment carried by maintenance professionals 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. The collected data on time, temperature, sleep, sound level and light was analysed. One of the conclusions was that airline maintenance personnel sleep about 5 hours per day whereas all experts agree that this is not enough and the recommended sleep is between 7.3 and 8 hours. The study also confirmed that lighting conditions in the maintenance environment are clearly inadequate. The final phase of the study will indicate the relation of fatigue and workplace factors to the incidents and accidents. It will also create guidelines for personnel (not guidelines for organizations!!!) to understand and address fatigue and other workplace factors.

UK CAA initiated a study this year on working hours and recommendations for ‘good practice’. They sent out 2000 questioners to individuals/engineers and they expect to complete the study in November 2001. Don Sherrit from Transport Canada reported (during his plannery presentation) that they have a study running on fatigue and for this process they used a questioner sent out to 5000 maintenance personnel.

Professor Drew Dawson from University of South Australia presented his views on the issue of fatigue based on the different research made by the Centre for Sleep Research of his University. Some of the highlights of his presentation were the following:

- Fatigue related impairment is similar to the effects of moderate alcohol intoxication. Research indicated that after 17 hours of wakefulness, fatigue-related impairment are equivalent to a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.05%. Furthermore, after 24 hours of wakefulness, impairment was equivalent to a BAC impairment of 0.10% - twice the legally prescribed limit (in many countries).

- Fatigue is rapidly emerging as one of the greatest single safety issue now facing the transport sector. Fatigue-related impairment is a major source of accidents and injuries and represents a significant social cost to the community.

- Transport industry workforce now work longer, more flexible hours, which often includes more shiftwork. It is likely that employers and employees with little knowledge of the financial, biological, psycho-social impacts of shiftwork and fatigue could negotiate work systems that significantly compromise potential benefits.

- Prescriptive hours legislation is inadequate means of controlling fatigue. Fatigue should be defined and managed as an identifiable workplace hazard and managed in the context of a generalised risk management model.

In general this session offered valuable information and gave us the chance to discuss the hot issue of duty time limitation (DTL). During the session I raised a few questions to the presenters on DTL. The discussion over the issue indicated that DTL is not the only means of managing fatigue and a more general approach is required which includes design of work schedules, cultural change, education etc. Although neither the employers nor many of the National Aviation Authorities favour DTL, it is an essential means of reducing the problem of fatigue. Without DTL the rest of the measures will be ineffective. It is obvious that it will take enormous amount of effort to achieve introduction of DTL for aviation maintenance personnel. We hope that it will not be necessary to see accidents (or more accidents) caused by fatigue before serious actions are taken.

Evangelos Demosthenous

Human Factors Coordinator

Tel: 357-2-384015

Fax: 357-2-777321

E-mail: vangelis@spidernet .com.cy