Commercial air transport remains one of the safest methods of moving people and goods from one point to another. The number of fatal incidents per mile travelled is extraordinarily low however the industry suffers a paradox of very low accident rate but a very high potential for loss of life when an accident does occur.
It has been widely quoted during the past several decades that around 75% of accidents are caused by human error but what this term fails to recognize is that humans are but one part of the wider environment – they must interact with many components including weather, technology, social systems etc. Despite this, humans are at the most very basic level the root cause of almost every incident because humans ultimately design and/or interact with all elements of the wider environment.