Psychology is key to airline safety at Boeing

Psychologists at Boeing fuel the human side of airplane safety.

By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff

In October 1996, maintenance workers for AeroPeru made a costly error: Before polishing a grimy Boeing 757, they taped up its static ports to keep the polish out. Unfortunately they forgot to peel off the tape.

The jet?s taped-up static ports triggered disaster for a flight that departed from Lima later that night. Pilots flying the jet received faulty readings as the jet hit thick fog. Unsure of their altitude and speed, they stalled the airplane and crashed it into the icy, black Pacific Ocean.

Seventy passengers were killed. Their family members filed lawsuits?several against AeroPeru are ongoing, and another against Boeing is pending.

The devastating loss of human life and ensuing legal battles all could have been avoided, says psychologist William Rankin, PhD, senior principal scientist for maintenance human factors at Boeing Commercial Airplane Group. He uses his psychology training to help airlines prevent such disasters.

'In most accidents it?s the process that?s to blame, not the individual worker,' says Rankin.

And it takes psychological expertise on human performance to first undercover flaws in the process, then find ways to fix them, he says. In the Aeroperu case, Rankin and a team of engineers and human factors experts surmised that orange-striped tape and better worker communication could have prevented the accident. They based their conclusion on an understanding of visual perception and human interaction.

Boeing makes use of psychologists? experience with human understanding throughout the company, it turns out. In addition to improving airplane safety and selecting employees in Boeing?s human resources department, psychologists also play a key role in airplane design, says Rankin. Engineers and computer specialists draw on psychologists? knowledge of sensation, perception, and human learning and performance to craft pilot-friendly airplanes, he says.

'Any time a person touches the airplane, from designing it, to flying it, to maintaining it, psychology comes into play,' says Rankin.

At Boeing, psychologists help decide which maintenance procedures should be written down and which ones people should memorize. And in the design department, they?re the ones advising engineers to place the controls where pilots can comfortably reach them and to use computer displays that reduce glare but aren?t too dim.

'Engineers are experts on the actual design of the plane but not always on how the human fits into that,' says psychologist Raymond Curtis Graeber, PhD, Boeing?s chief engineeer for human factors. 'Psychologists know how to integrate the human properly into the design, thereby improving safety and performance efficiency.'

From nuclear power to airplanes

Working at Boeing wasn?t in Rankin?s plans back in 1977 when he graduated from Washington State University with a doctorate in experimental psychology.

His background in human learning and performance took him first to the Battelle Memorial Institute in Seattle. There he researched such issues as public perceptions of nuclear power. He also researched employee training and selection and computerized systems at nuclear power plants. In 1988, Rankin moved to Boeing. Before taking on maintenance issues, he worked in computing and employee surveying, hiring and promotion.

Maintenance may seem mundane after nuclear power, but Rankin says that?s far from the truth. He says he grew tired of 'hustling contracts and grants' for years and finds his new job both important and exciting.

'By giving mechanics the tools and information to cut down on errors, we?re helping prevent the loss of lives,' he says. 'Right now, maintenance is an especially big issue because with commercial air travel on the rise, the airline industry is pushing to lower the accident rate.'

Maintenance errors underlie half of all flight delays and cancellations due to engine problems, says Rankin. And they contribute to 15 percent of airplane accidents worldwide, according to Boeing data. To lower the number of accidents, Rankin and his colleagues have developed an error-reduction procedure that has already cut mechanical delays at one airline by 18 percent.

How to prevent errors

Rankin and his team?s error reducer?known as the Maintenance Error Decision Aid (MEDA)?is gaining popularity in the airline industry. Almost 60 airplane maintenance organizations now use it with their workers. Boeing officials apply the process in several steps. First they meet with the airline?s senior maintenance management staff and discuss recent maintenance problems, such as an incorrectly installed airplane fuel pump. In the meetings, they underscore the psychological factors underlying the error, such as communication breakdown among workers or training that fails to clearly explain fuel pump installation.

Next they explain MEDA?s main principles:

? Mechanics don?t intend to make mistakes.

? Errors result from such workplace factors as unclearly written manuals, poor communication between workers as they change shifts and a lack of needed tools.

?Management can fix the factors that contribute to errors. For example, they can buy the needed tools or clarify maintenance instructions.

Drawing on these notions, Rankin and his team use learning, reinforcement and punishment theory to convince airlines that blaming the worker doesn?t solve the problem. They note that the threat of revoked pay and other punishment can lead workers to cover up the incorrectly installed fuel pump?the worst outcome of all. The team trains maintenance managers to instead interview workers about errors and to revamp maintenance procedures based on their investigations. After the training, it falls to managers to make the recommended changes and keep using the MEDA process.

'MEDA requires extra effort, but it?s good for you, like taking cod liver oil,' Rankin says.

By using the process, one airline stopped short an expensive oversight: Several times, when the maintenance crew dragged a Boeing 747 into the hangar for repairs, tug drivers towed the airplane in too far and damaged its tail. On closer examination, MEDA-trained managers discovered that the tug drivers? and wing walkers? headsets were on different frequencies: Tug drivers couldn?t hear the wing walkers? yells to 'Stop!'

Where to seat the pilots

Elsewhere at Boeing, psychologists strive to keep airplanes simple to fly as the technology grows increasingly complex. Overseeing their efforts is psychologist Graeber, who holds a doctorate in physiological and experimental psychology and whose research background in circadian rhythms and jet lag brought him to Boeing in 1990. At NASA he researched the amount of sleep pilots need to fly airplanes effectively. From there, he moved into cockpit design and he now directs a team of human factors engineers, computer scientists and psychologists.

Among the other psychologists at Boeing is Alan Jacobsen, PhD, who works on simplifying the flight displays. Recently, Jacobsen and several colleagues discovered a problem with the electronic displays that supply flight data to pilots: The symbols and text on the screens were sometimes too faint to read. Using his psychological background in human vision, Jacobsen thickened the text enough that it would appear brighter, but not unclear.

Another experimental psychologist making pilots? job easier is George Boucek, PhD. He studies methods of alerting pilots to problems during flight?an engine fire, for example, or possible collisions with a mountain or another airplane. He and his colleagues have found that problems are most likely averted when the computer displays tell pilots what to do, rather than just warning them of danger.

'If you?re flying too close to the ground, a warning message that flashes ?pull up? is more useful than one saying ?ground proximity,?' says Boucek.

He also heads an effort to design a supersonic airplane that will travel almost three times the speed of sound. His group is exploring where to seat the pilots in the hot, cramped, pointy nose of the aircraft. Their insight into seating arrangements that allow people to comfortably operate machinery?at low risk of error?is critical to the airplane?s design, Boucek says.

Just as Rankin didn?t foresee a future in maintaining airplanes, Boucek never pictured himself working on the next incarnation of the Concorde. Their experience has taught them that psychology plays an integral role in air travel.

'Psychologists bring an understanding of error reduction to an industry where human error costs lives,' says Rankin.

This article is the first in a series of Monitor articles that will profile psychologists with unconventional careers.