Qualitative Analysis of General Aviation Pilots’ Aviation Safety Reporting System Incident Narratives Using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System

NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) gathers data from voluntary aviation safety reports for nonfatal accidents and incidents. These reports are a valuable resource in identifying unsafe occurrences and hazardous situations in the aviation industry. A tool known as the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS), initially developed for military use, has proven useful for root cause analysis of human causes in aviation accidents and incidents, including in commercial contexts. This research study utilizes HFACS to classify the ASRS safety reports to identify key indicators in General Aviation (GA) non-fatal accidents and incidents. Qualitative data analysis reveals relationships between incidents and causal factors, indicating 53% of incidents to be perceptual errors, 32% decision errors, and 26% skill-based errors. Prevalent preconditions for these errors include crew resource management (53%), physical environment (32%), and technological environment (16%). The study aligns with previous research findings, suggesting that crew resource management is a common factor in both GA incidents and commercial and military aviation. While GA pilots may make different types of errors, such discrepancies are not prevalent in the voluntarily reported data.