Aviation incidents have been occuring ever since planes were invented. Small incidents tend to involve only one cause but the three incidents mentioned here involve a chain of unfotunate events. The three incidents are:.
The Tenerife Airport Disaster.
The Mount Erebus Disaster.
The KAL 007 Disaster.
These three incidents will be analysed to show the how each small factor played a large part in the disaster that occurred. This is known as 'James Reason's Swiss Cheese Model.' This model is a representation of human error. There are five major 'slices of cheese' (layers of defence) in this model. They are as follows:.
Decision Makers – Latent failures.
Line Management – Latent failures.
Preconditions – Latent failures.
Productive Activities – Active failures.
Defences – Latent and active failures.
[ CITATION Sky13 l 1033 ] Some disasters do not include all of these and others include other factors. .
Tenerife Airport Disaster.
This disaster occurred on March 27th 1977 on a small island known in the Atlantic called Tenerife. 'James Reason's Swiss Cheese model' of human error is a perfect desrcibtion of the events that occured that day. This disaster involves other factors than those mentioned in the model. They were all unavoidable circumstances. Firstly, a bomb was set off in the Palmas Airport where both the KLM 747 and the Pan Am 747 were meant to land. [ CITATION PBS12 l 1033 ]This then cause a diversion to the small Tenerife Airport. The airport was incredibly over crowded because of this. Lastly, the weather turned very bad very quickly. When came time for takeoff, the pilots had minimal sight infront of the aircrafts. The problem that occurred with the decision makers was the choice of airport the planes were diverted to. The Tenrife Airport was not designed for the number of planes there and the size of the 747's. There was a huge lack of space and equipment for the amount of planes.