Abstract
This chapter gives the internal and external factors affecting the mental and physical activities of aircrew personnel by examining a wide range of aspects, from aviation psychology to solar physics. The author mentions the cognitive effects, mental activities, nervous system, neurophysiology, and physical activities as internal factors while solar activity, geomagnetic storms, and meteorological effects as external factors. Firstly, the consequences of the design of an air traffic management system as system capacity and throughput, progress time and/or ongoing work, efficiency and cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and complexity to performance evaluation and optimization; secondly, the results of geomagnetic storms over 115 years of aircraft accidents for latitudes between ±10º ≤ φ ≤ ±90º in the northern and southern hemispheres of Earth, which is a very important space weather event and could be the main reason for most aircraft accidents are investigated on the mental and physical health conditions.
TopIntroduction
Air transportation is the most customary, most convenient, and preferred transportation due to its large number of advantageous features such as fast and reliable services by shortening time independent of geographical barriers and accessibility around the world, and safety; and has become a high level of technical, administrative, and technological operations recently by the introduction and production of larger and faster aircraft, which largely includes advanced information management technologies (Göker, et al., 2021; Aksen et al., 2024). The fact that aircraft can carry people, cargo, mail, and similar at a more affordable price and in a shorter time has made aviation worthy in the sectoral meaning; furthermore, air traffic control relates to teamwork, and it will be necessary to develop team structures and initiate optimization programs due to the increase in traffic volume (Riedle, 2006; Göker, et al., 2021). In addition to this, investigations and studies are carried out by many organizations to minimize the risk of accidents and maximize safety with developing technology.
The primary causes of accidents can be shown as human factors, mechanical/technical reasons, meteorology, bird strikes, lightning, etc., however, the human factors account for approximately 72-80% of all aircraft accidents shown from the accident reports. It can be said that accidents caused by mechanical/technical reasons have been replaced by an increase in the number of aircraft accidents caused by human-induced errors depending on the increasing manpower with the developing technology while the main causes of accidents in the first years of aviation were due to mechanical/technical reasons (Çetingüç, 2016; Göker, et al., 2021). Increasing aviation companies and developing accordingly getting larger traffic volume and demand for air transportation are caused by increasing competition; therefore, businesses that tend to overload employees for the sake of gaining more can cause increasing risks and aircraft accidents (Göker, et al., 2021; Aksen et al., 2024). Particularly, this overload and pressure on aircrew personnel who are much more exposed to the effects of external conditions such as space weather, meteorological events, and radiation will be much higher.
According to the “Swiss-Cheese Model”, the cause of accidents is due to consecutive violations such as hardware or operational failures of multi-system defense, and all accidents are caused by a combination of both “active” which are errors that show expeditious effect are usually caused by principal personnel such as pilots, air traffic controllers, and aircraft maintenance technicians, and “hidden” errors that have been concealed due to a transaction or decision taken much earlier than accidents often caused by regulatory authorities and decision makers (Uslu and Dönmez, 2016). However, there are also meteorological and/or space weather events that may make it difficult to intervene in some “sudden” situations, and the reason why it is difficult to be concerned is that we suddenly get caught in this event during the flight. In this case, a different mechanism than the Swiss-Cheese Model must become a part of an activity related to space weather events, and it can be presented to different models connected with the “Sun-Earth-Flight (SEF)” connection. Particularly, it is impossible to predict geomagnetic storms (GSs) days in advance, like weather forecasts. The situation will be very difficult and complicated for the aircraft and the aircrew personnel and passengers on board if it encounters such a storm.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Aviation Psychology: It is one of the branches of psychology that deal with all information relating to civil and military aviation, such as performances and support of aircrew and airline personnel, passengers, if any, air traffic control system administrators, and control team with all other responsible people, in addition to those in charge of all design and maintenance of the aircraft, includes the application of people based on their behavioural skills and limits in the face of all these information above. It also leads to tests and interviews to find the right people in the selection of flight candidates, finding solutions to the risky thoughts and behaviours of the flight candidate and their psychiatric disorders.
Neurophysiology: It is a branch of physiology that deals with the functional properties of neurons, glia, and networks rather than the anatomy of the nervous system, and it also helps to diagnose and monitor the progress of nervous disorders “ for detail explanation about the short- and long-term changes in the neurophysiological status of pilots due to radiation exposure caused by geomagnetic storms, see the paper of Göker (2023) ” .
Geomagnetic Storm: It is the temporary disturbance of Earth’s magnetosphere caused by a shock wave that comes from the solar wind. The disturbances that cause geomagnetic storms may be a solar coronal mass ejection (CME-more severe) or a co-rotating interaction region (CIR-much less severe), a high-speed stream of solar wind originating from a coronal hole (CH). These disturbances change depending on the increasing and decreasing phases of the solar cycle.
Mental Activities: It is described as anything that encourages, activates, or strengthens the mind, and increases the flow of blood, oxygen, and nutrients to the brain. It is also called neurological stimulation which can be provided internally from thought or externally from the environment.
Physical Activities: The World Health Organization (WHO) defines physical activity as any movement function including immobile times, for transport to get to and from places, or as part of physical activity, produced by skeletal muscles that requires energy expenditure.
Cognitive Psychology: It is a branch of psychology that studies comprehension, memory, and intelligence processing periods, and it investigates the relationship between the class and structure of cognitive processes in the organism and the class and characteristics of observable behaviours.
Nervous System: It transmits signals between the brain and the rest of the body, including internal organs to control the ability to move, breath, see, think, hear, and more. The nervous system has two main parts, the central nervous system which is made up of the brain and spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system which is made up of nerves that branch off from the spinal cord and extend to all parts of the body.
Solar Activity: Solar activity, which is strongly associated with magnetic fields, as measured by the number of sunspots, follows an 11-year cycle between two maxima, and a 22-year cycle depends on changing solar magnetic polarity. It is the collective term for all active phenomena on the Sun, including sunspots, faculae, active regions, plages, active prominences, and flares between the increasing and decreasing phases of solar cycles.
Meteorological Effects: They are observable weather events such as temperature, air pressure, water vapour, and mass flow on the Earth’s atmosphere, and the variations and interactions of these variables over time are explained by meteorology. These effects can be classified as fog, wind, storm, snowstorm, sandstorm, clouds, turbulence, icing, shower/rain, oraj, lightning, hurricane, snow, volcano eruption, and bad weather conditions in aviation literature.