| Popis: |
Cabin safety plays a crucial role in the survival and injury rate of aviation incidents and accidents. A safety literature review found that limited research on aircraft cabin safety has been carried out, especially regarding the safety role of the Flight Attendants. This study aimed to fill this gap by investigating factors that affect aircraft cabin safety and are influenced by the safety behaviours of the Flight Attendants. Due to the character of the Flight Attendants’ work and identified literature gap, this study applied a qualitative methodology focused on revealing the nature of day-to-day work in relation to safety. Flight Attendants’ perceptions and interpretations of the factors that affect safety were explored through sixteen interviews. Three different ranks of Flight Attendants were interviewed, which allowed triangulation of data and provided different views of the factors that affect safety. The main findings of the study identified that systemic approach to the analysis of safety, through studies of everyday uneventful operation, has the potential to improve safety. Flight Attendants’ views can provide directions for safety enhancements, as they display awareness of the safety influencing factors, despite predominantly safe operations. It was also found that classification of safety influences in a causal manner might not be the most appropriate categorization. This is due to the revealed multifaceted features of safety causes and complex links to their outcomes. Furthermore, identified complexities were found to obscure unambiguous identification of onedimensional safety affecting factors, or at least did so within the scope of this study. This research also determined that differing job responsibilities provide different views on safety influencing factors. Establishing the most important influences presented a challenge, as Flight Attendants highlighted varying factors as strongest influences on safety, depending on their job rank. These findings reveal inconsistencies in current safety models and a need to search for comprehensive one-dimensional safety influences, with clear links to their outcomes. Moreover, this study proposes an exploration of alternative categorisations of safety, which would systematise complex correlations between safety influences, direct causes of errors and event outcomes. In addition, benefits of using the knowledge of practitioners for improvements of safety were highlighted throughout this research. |
