Accident reports should include mechanics' details: IFA

Airlines' abilities to learn from accidents involving maintenance errors is being severely compromised by investigators' failure to include in their reports the salient details of the engineers or mechanics who made the mistakes, claims an International Federation of Airworthiness representative.

IFA technical committee member and engineer Philip Hosey notes the prolific information provided about pilots in accident reports. This information includes their licences, ages, medical records, flying hours - both total and on type - flight and rest records, and other facts.

Speaking at the International Aviation Safety Seminar in Honolulu at the end of October, Hosey contrasted this with the lack of equivalent detail about the engineers involved or the circumstances associated with their work and the specific job on which the mistake was made.

He says that all the data pertaining to pilots was faithfully recorded even when they played no part in the accident cause or outcome, whereas detail about the engineer's training, health, experience, background and working hours was almost always omitted in reports, even when maintenance error was involved.

Hosey quotes only one recent report he was aware of in which all the appropriate detail about the engineer and task was provided.

He says it is remarkable that this difference in attention to the detail provided about two different professional groups in relation to accidents should exist, and it may be one of the reasons why managing the risk of error during maintenance receives less detailed attention than managing the risk of pilot error.

Recording engineer working hours and patterns, including shift times and rest periods, is at least as important as for pilots, Hosey argues, because the pilot's task can, at high-risk periods, generate adrenaline that can help overcome the affects of fatigue. An engineer's task does not benefit from an adrenaline burst toward the end of a long night shift, Hosey claims.

Source: Air Transport Intelligence news