Guidance and control of aircraft in the landing phase imposes extra pilot work loads, hence application of automatic landing control systems is of great importance. In this study automatic landing control systems are introduced and an optimal landing control system is designed. The control system performance criteria are based on minimum control effort. The designed system is simulated for a tr...

Software is playing an increasing role in adverse events, and the understanding of its failure mechanisms and contributions to accidents is lacking. A safety gap is growing between the software-intensive technological capabilities and our understanding of the ways they can fail, hindering our ability to prevent accidents. To identify some of these failure mechanisms, we examined the database of...

The terrorist attacks of September 2001 had significant economic effects on the aviation industries. Passenger numbers fells across many countries and several large carriers were threatened with bankruptcy. More recently, there has been a gradual recovery. This has renewed concern that the rising volume of traffic will lead to an increase in the total number of safety-related incidents as accid...

This paper describes the results of an independent analysis of the probable and contributory causes of selected aviation accidents in the United States between 1996 and 2003. The purpose of the study was to assess the comparative frequency of a variety of causal factors in the reporting of these adverse events. Although our results show that more of these high consequence accidents were attribu...

guidance and control of aircraft in the landing phase imposes extra pilot work loads, hence application of automatic landing control systems is of great importance. in this study automatic landing control systems are introduced and an optimal landing control system is designed. the control system performance criteria are based on minimum control effort. the designed system is simulated for a tr...

On 4 October 1992, a large cargo plane crashed into an apartment building in the Bijlmermeer quarter of Amsterdam. In the years following the accident, an increasing number of people started reporting health complaints, which they attributed to exposure to dangerous substances after the crash. Since the aircraft had been carrying depleted uranium as counterbalance weights and about 150 kg urani...

The Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) was used to classify maintenance-related general aviation accidents in the United States from 1990 to 2000 inclusive. The analysis revealed that among the maintainers, skill-based errors were most frequent cause of accidents, followed by violations committed by both professional maintainers and owneroperators. Furthermore, violations ...

BACKGROUND Chlorpheniramine is known to cause drowsiness, and this side effect has a potential to impair performance and could be a factor in accidents. METHODS Therefore, to establish the prevalence of this drug in pilot fatalities of aviation accidents, a postmortem toxicology database--maintained at the Civil Aeromedical Institute--was examined for the presence of chlorpheniramine in the f...

l i t t l e i m p o r t a n c e or attention has been given to the role of alcohol in civil general aviation accidents. Its significance has never been determined. This is evidenced, for ex­ ample, by most recent authoritative accident statistical reports (2, 3 ). In these statistical reviews, covering 929 general aviation fatal accidents which occurred in the years 1960 and 1961, only eight ca...

In February 1912, the Surgeon General of the United States Army prepared a special preliminary physical examination for candidates who were to receive instruction in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps. This examination and those devised over the next four years were too demanding and few candidates could pass. In response to the need to revise medical standards for aviators, Colonel Theod...