Ethics in Aviation

  ATC (Air Traffic Control) is intended to prevent mid-air and on-ground collisions between two or more aircraft. Also, ATC assures the order and the expedited flow of air traffic. There are several ATC entities and each one has its own function throughout the flight. For example, when you are on the ground, and you want to taxi to the runway, you should contact Ground Control, until you reach the runway; at that point, Tower will be in charge of your take-off. The two entities chosen for this week’s blog are Tower and Flight Service Station (FSS). The function of the tower is to ensure safe and expeditious operation in the vicinity of the airport. It is important to note that this is a non-radar facility, so the controllers must have the aircraft in visual contact to control them. However, radars can be used as an aid to monitor the position of airplanes around the airport. Other operations such as traffic patterns are also controlled by Tower. On the other hand, FSSs are air traf...

  As we have seen during this class, aviation has grown exponentially due to increased passenger and freight demands. Therefore, airports deal with the high flow of traffic arriving, departing, and taxiing. Unfortunately, people living close to airports also are affected by the consequences of the elevated flow of traffic; the clearest example is the noise airplanes emit when they fly over. According to Van Praag et al. (2005), people suffer because of the noise but also, but it has other consequences such as the devaluation of their houses. Noise is probably the reason that many people do not like to live near an airport because airplanes are really loud. Despite technological advances such as the hi-by-pass ratio engines, which are more efficient and quieter than old engines, the noise emitted by aircraft is still annoying for most people. Airport managers are obviously aware of this situation due to the continuous complaints of the annoyed neighbors. For this reason, they must...

  Throughout aviation history, laws and regulations have been developed with aviation growth. For example, with the growing number of passengers after WWII, we realize that we needed to create international regulations to apply in case of unlawful seizure of an aircraft or other illegal acts committed on board. That is why in 1963, the Tokyo convention of the ICAO was signed by 40 states and came into force in 1969.  This convention is intended to be applied in the case of violation of the penal law or other behaviors or acts that, despite not being punished by the law, put at risk the safety of the flight. This convention is divided into 7 chapters, the first two chapters are about the scope of application and jurisdiction; chapter 3 is about the faculties of the aircraft commander. The commander has the faculty of disembarking or delivering unruly passengers to the competent authorities if he or she deems it appropriate. Also in extreme cases, a flight can be diverted due to...

  Human factors play an important role in aviation; in fact, nearly 80% of all aviation accidents and incidents have occurred due to human error. For that reason, the human factors concept has gained importance in the last few years. Many people think that human factors are just a synonym of Crew Resources Management (CRM), however, it involves much more than that. The human ability to interact with the system, machines, manuals, the environment, and even with other people makes part of the definition of human factors (Boeing, 1999). In order to better understand this topic, psychologists have developed frameworks and models such as the SHELL model. The shell model is a tool created to analyze the interactions of all the components described earlier. It has 4 elements which are S (software), H (hardware), E (environment), and L (liveware). The Liveware is the core of the Shell Model and when a mismatch between liveware and any other element occurs, it will entail a human error (I...

  Aviation Security: Hijacking   The morning of September 11 th of 2001 will live in infamy after 3000 people were killed due to a terrorist attack. A terrorist Islamic group hijacked 4 civil aircraft performing commercial operations and crashed two of them against the World Trade Center, one against the Pentagon and the last one did not reach its objective of destroying the white house. After these events, the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) was created to prevent a similar situation to occur (Burns, 2017). Everybody knows that an aircraft hijack is the illegal seizure of an aircraft. To prevent hijacking or other terrorist attacks to occur, TSA has several layers of security. For example, when a passenger is booking a flight, TSA checks that the passenger is not a known criminal or a person who had had unruly behaviors on previous flights. That means that if you are an unruly passenger that endanger the lives of other people, you could be banned from flyi...

 The pressurization system permits normal operation at high altitudes. Modern aircraft usually fly at high altitudes, where the oxygen partial pressure is not enough for the human body. ( Federal Aviation Administration, 2022) Almost every pressurized aircraft has a sealed cabin capable of containing air at a higher pressure than outside. In order to pressurize the cabin, the pressurization system takes air from the compressor stage of the engine; this air is known as bleed air. Pressurization systems are made to maintain a cabin altitude of no more than 8000 feet at the cruise phase and normally are automatically controlled. Failure of this system could entail a loss of cabin pressure which may be catastrophic depending on the circumstances. Giving an example, a malfunction of the outflow valve may produce a slow depressurization. This type of depressurization is the most dangerous because it is difficult to identify. Therefore, modern aircraft have cabin altitude gauges, cabin ...