Understanding the Interaction between Safety Management and the ‘Can Do’ Attitude in Air Traffic Management: Modeling the Causes of the Überlingen Mid-Air Collision

This paper focuses on the contribution of Air Traffic Management to the Überlingen mid-air collision. Events and Causal Factor models are developed to show the interaction between technical, human factors and managerial issues in the causes of this accident. In particular, we show how problems in safety management contributed to an error inducing context. Our analysis also points to the wider dangers that arise from a ‘can do’ attitude in which staff actively device ‘work arounds’ when faced with a degraded technical infrastructure.