Customer Reviews

Handbook of Aviation Human Factors (Human Factors in Transportation)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I used this book in a graduate Human Factors course, and while I disliked it at first, I slowly grew to hate it. I give it two stars because it does, on occasion, contain good information, but more often than not is disjointed, poorly organized, and unfocused.

The book is essentially a collection of academic papers related to Human Factors in aviation (some are moderately tangential to the subject matter at hand), and as such it is really better suited for use as a reference book than as a text. It is further limited as a text by virtue of the fact that because most of the articles are extremely specialized, giant chunks of Human Factors considerations are left totally unaddressed.

I particularly disliked the contribution from Daniel E. Maurino, entitled "Crew Resource Management: A Time For Reflection." There are much better resources available on CRM (and now Threat and Error Management as well.) On the other end of the quality spectrum, the article by Giovanni Costa titled "Fatigue and Biological Rhythms" is an excellent account of the effects of fatigue on human performance, and emphasizes the importance of circadian desynchronosis in aviation safety. Most of the articles range between these two in quality, but these two stand out for me as the defining ends of the spectrum.

This book is valuable as a reference tool and for some very specialized pieces of knowledge. It is unsuitable for a survey course in Human Factors at any level, and an attempt to read it as a text is torturous at best. Combine the unsuitability as a text with the usurious price of $145.00 and this is one of the worst values around.

One problem with the book is that, while it has a 1999 publication date, the great majority of the articles were written about 1993-1995. This fact made the book about 6 years out-of-date as soon as it was published...and, in the aviation HF arena of the late 1990's-early 2000's, this is a crucial flaw. Why? Besides the obvious, this period in aviation HF was one of both great strides and great re-considerations/re-evaluations of previously accepted aviation HF dogmas. As one example, CRM which had been heavily promoted for 20+ years by FAA and the airline industry as the silver bullet in human error accident/incident reduction was finally scrutinized and found wanting as to lack of evalative methods, among other flaws, and replaced by risk assessment/management, while as reinforcing the command/leadership role of the pilot.
The book is not so much poorly organized as lacking a overarching and integrative rationale for the topic areas.
The good? There is a new edition in the works and, if the publishers do not waste another 5 years getting it to the public, it will be up-to-date. However, I believe that it will use, basically, many of the same topics/authors, simply up-dated. One good thing is that the chapter on Civil Aviation Security will be 90% new, because of 9/11 and what has happened since.

This is basically a collection of academic research and research methods geared towards a graduate-level class in aviation human factors. It is what it is, of interest to those involved in higher level coursework in the aviation field.