Human factors error in a cue and symbol-saturated environment

The purpose of this study was to increase the understanding of rotary wing flight mishaps by investigating classes of ambiguity in the human factors mishap environment. Human factors failings are often coupled with the interference of the interpretation of information, and a deterioration of situational awareness. The researcher's interest was spurred by the relatively high percentage of catastrophic mishaps attributed to human failings. The mishap environments were treated as complex systems and subsystems, rather than as discrete phenomena in isolation. A multiple case study combined with hypothesis testing of data accumulated through content analysis was conducted on five rotary wing mishaps. Chi-square was utilized to analyze the prevalence of specific categories of noise factors in the five mishap environments. Noise for the purpose of this research was defined as any intervening variable that degraded the ability to receive or interpret critical situational information. The multiple case study and data analysis demonstrated that, in general, noise was a pervasive feature in all five of the selected mishap environments. In addition, this study suggested that the distribution of the sources of noise perceived by aircrews was appreciably different from that of the managers and supervisors. It was further suggested that the conflicting perceptual differences between supervisors and crews were the most significant noise factors to interfere with the processing of critical situational information.