Equipment failures - examples from US civil aviation
Aircraft systems provide an interesting insight into many of the principles of Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Redundant systems, layered protections and detection of faults are important parts of modern aviation designs. Although many potential failure modes can be anticipated in advance, it often happens that mishaps and actual failures are sources of much additional information. Not all mishaps result in loss of life - but sadly in two of the cases outlined here, aircraft were on landing approaches where very little time was available for the flight crews to identify the failure and take corrective actions. All lives were lost on both aircraft. The two tragic accidents were eventually traced to the same failure - although in the first accident other causes were wrongly attributed initially...
Download PDF
|
