A Preliminary Test of Two Models for Human Factors Analysis of Operational Errors

As the congestion and complexity of airspace continue to grow, the importance of identifying the human factors contributing to separation violations between aircraft will increase. An air traffic controller’s ability to maintain high levels of performance is becoming increasingly interdependent with advanced interfaces and computerized support technology. Therefore, appropriate methods for investigation and identification of human factors related to maintaining separation standards are needed by aviation incident investigators and human factors researchers. This paper reports on one of a series of activities to harmonise two human factors techniques developed for retrospective investigation of human errors in aviation systems: The Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS; Shappell & Weigmann, 2000) and the Human Error in ATM Technique (HERA; EATMP, 2000). A comparison of the two techniques was conducted by having an air traffic control (ATC) subject matter expert (SME) analyse a common set of incident reports using both. Results demonstrated that HFACS captured human factors at a categorical level, while HERA identified specific cognitive processes. Future work will build on the strengths of both techniques to create a retrospective method for investigation of human error in operational errors.