Ethics in Aviation

Air Traffic Control (ATC) is a necessity to ensure the safety of aircraft and to maximize operational efficiency. ATC is separated into different facilities to be more applicable to the airspace under control and to divide the workload among controllers. Typically an aircraft will start in terminal airspace where they will be under control of a control tower. Then if the pilots file for an IFR flight plan and leave the terminal airspace, they will likely transfer to another ATC facility such as Radar Approach Control or Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC). All air traffic controllers within the United States operate under the FAA JO 7110.65 and could also have local regulations to make operations more restrictive depending on the local operations. Tower controllers focus on the immediate airspace surrounding the airport. For example, Seymour Johnson AFB terminal airspace is ten nautical miles in diameter and extends from the surface up to and including 2,500 ft MSL. The important

Airport managers have many things they need to consider and account for when helping run operations at an airport. When acknowledging the environmental impacts that an airport can have, the airport manager must show their concern and efforts to best prevent and limit the effects the airport has on the environment. The four main categories of pollution that an airport will need to address are air, noise, light, and water/land pollution. Among those four categories, one of the most important environmental impacts that airport managers have to face is air pollution. The attention of this is typically drawn to the airplanes themselves and their emissions since they’re the main contributor of air pollution at an airport, but can also include the equipment and vehicles used to service aircraft, the pollution generated from the building itself, and even the airport-related traffic leading into and out of the airport. As with any air pollution, it has a steady contribution to global warming. F

The Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) that I have chosen was Part 5 of Title 14, Safety Management Systems (SMS). This law establishes that air carriers and commercial operators operating under domestic, flag, and supplemental operations must have a SMS in place (eCFR, 2015) . This law then further describes what is required to be in the SMS such as the safety policy, safety risk management, safety assurance, and safety promotion (eCFR, 2015) . This law also describes the recordkeeping requirements for the SMS held within the company (eCFR, 2015) . This law was finalized in 2015 and the SMS had to be used within the organization by March of 2018. All together, this law’s requirement for the implementation of SMS is to ensure that companies have control over the potential risks associated within its works and to effectively identify and mitigate new risks to prevent unnecessary aircraft mishaps. The FAR presented has helped shape the aviation industry by reducing the overall chance of a

Human error is one of the biggest reasons that cause accidents in aviation. Approximately 60-80% of accidents that occur are related to human error (FAA, 2006). These errors result from the wide range of factors that vary between humans. Human factors are the capabilities of a person, whether that be mental or physical, that contribute to their daily performance. One thing to understand about human factors is that it varies between humans because of the individual's capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, or limitations (FAA, 2018). Mental factors can include disorders, difficult emotions such as depression, stress, or even the coping mechanism used to deal with problems encountered. Physical factors could be the literal size of the person when referencing the task needed to be completed or something that can limit someone from being efficient such as heavy tools. For example, if someone needs to enter a crawl space or a tight area, they may have difficulties if their body or hand is

The airliner industry faces constant threats towards it’s business and security overall. One threat that many didn’t take seriously at first was the outbreak of COVID-19. COVID-19 is a highly infectious virus that many people across the globe have faced, some even more than once. This threat has put many people out of work in general and if they have the illness, typically with a two week quarantine. In doing so, airliners will be under manned and services could be slower altogether. Approximately 400,000 airline workers lost their jobs due to COVID (Kelly, 2021). COVID has caused many airliners to shut down to prevent spread and some couldn’t recover from this and filed for bankruptcy. When airliners started opening back up, they limited how many people could fly on an aircraft causing a loss in potential profit for the airliner. The airlines, internationally, lost about $371 billion dollars with a 60% decline of passengers in 2020 (ICAO, 2021). The layer of TSA that could mitigate th

All parts that compose an aircraft have an affect on how that aircraft will fly if something went wrong. Of course, some parts are considerably more important to the integrity of the aircraft, while others will make the flight uncomfortable. Landing gear failure has the potential to be one of the more severe ones depending if the gear is stuck down or stuck up. The primary indication of determining if your landing gear is up or down is by the landing gear indicator lights in the cockpit. Another possible indicator is when attempting to lower the gear, you hear an unusual sound.      Landing gear failures are typically a mechanical issue, but can also be an electrical issue. Mechanically, the parts that lower and raise the gear could have gone bad or not secured properly. As well, the lubrication may have not been maintained properly or the materials corroded (Parat et al., 2019). Loss or inefficient application of hydraulic fluid can prevent the lubrication needed and cause corrosion a