Summary Japan Airlines Flight 123 is often described as a structural failure—and that’s true—but that doesn’t really capture what was going on underneath. What makes this accident important is that it wasn’t just a crack or a weak point. It was the result of something building up over time, quietly, across years of operation […]
Summary The Tenerife Airport Disaster is often talked about as a miscommunication event, but that really only scratches the surface. What actually happened was a breakdown in how everyone involved understood the situation. Different parts of the system—air traffic control, the flight crews, and even the environment itself—were no longer aligned on what was actually
Where FHA and FTA sit in safety engineering Functional Hazard Assessment (FHA) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) are two of the main tools used in aviation safety engineering. But they’re not standalone tasks—you don’t just “do an FHA” or “do an FTA” in isolation. They’re part of a bigger process that helps you understand how
Safety cases don’t usually fail where people expect When people hear “safety case failure,” they tend to picture something pretty straightforward. A missing requirement An incorrect assumption A bad calculation A hazard that was overlooked And to be fair, those things do happen. But if you’ve spent any real time around complex systems, you start
Summary The Boeing 737 MAX accidents weren’t caused by a single failure, or one obvious mistake. They came from a mix of things interacting in ways that weren’t fully visible at the time—design assumptions, certification processes, organisational pressure, and how pilots actually interact with the system in real conditions. What makes this case important is
The Core Problem Air France Flight 447 was in what should have been one of the most stable phases of flight. Night cruise over the Atlantic Autopilot engaged Normal Law active Cruising at FL350 No unusual workload in the cockpit Everything about the situation looked routine. Then, in a very short space of time, the
A Shift in How We Think About Accidents If you go back and look at older aviation accidents, they’re usually quite straightforward to categorise. Engine failure Structural failure Fuel starvation Control surface issues There’s typically a clear starting point. Something breaks, and that failure drives everything that follows. But when you start looking at more
