Acta Polytechnica CTU Proceedings


doi:10.14311/APP.2017.12.0104
Acta Polytechnica CTU Proceedings 12:104–107, 2017 © Czech Technical University in Prague, 2017

available online at http://ojs.cvut.cz/ojs/index.php/app

THE FUTURE OF PASSENGER AIR TRANSPORT – VERY LARGE
AIRCRAFT AND OUT KEY HUMAN FACTORS AFFECTING THE
OPERATION AND SAFETY OF PASSENGER AIR TRANSPORT

Petra Skolilová

CTU in Prague, Faculty of Transportation Sciences, Czech Republic
correspondence: skolilova@fd.cvut.cz

Abstract. The article outlines some human factors affecting the operation and safety of passenger
air transport given the massive increase in the use of the VLA.

Decrease of the impact of the CO2 world emissions is one of the key goals for the new aircraft
design. The main wave is going to reduce the burned fuel. Therefore, the eco-efficiency engines combined
with reasonable economic operation of the aircraft are very important from an aviation perspective.
The prediction for the year 2030 says that about 90% of people, which will use long-haul flights to fly
between big cities. So, the A380 was designed exactly for this time period, with a focus on the right
capacity, right operating cost and right fuel burn per seat. There is no aircraft today with better fuel
burn combined with eco-efficiency per seat, than the A380. The very large aircrafts (VLAs) are the
future of the commercial passenger aviation. Operating cost versus safety or CO2 emissions versus
increasing automation inside the new generation aircraft. Almost 80% of the world aircraft accidents
are caused by human error based on wrong action, reaction or final decision of pilots, the catastrophic
failures of aircraft systems, or air traffic control errors are not so frequent. So, we are at the beginning
of a new age in passenger aviation and the role of the human factor is more important than ever.

Keywords: VLA, human factors, air transport, air traffic, security.

1. Introduction
The study of human factors deals with people’s in-
teraction with their environments. In the case of
general aviation, this is the study of pilot performance
with influence on the emotions, stress, fatigue or de-
sign of cockpits or interaction with crewmembers, air
traffic control personnel and others. Fatigue is an
expected aspect of life and there is a very thin bor-
der between normal daily fatigue (for example fatigue
from lack of sleep) and the tough fatigue from continu-
ous stress. Typically, there are no significant marks or
consequences. But the aftermath in general aviation
environment can be disastrous[1].

1.1. Introduction of the Air traffic
markets situation

Aviation Mega-cities (AMCs) are the new phenomenon
for the long-haul market. For long-haul flights we are
rating the traffic over 2,000 nautical miles. More
than 40% of all long-haul passengers are beginning
or ending, at AMCs and another 20% are between
these 40 AMCs. More than another 40 cities have a
potential to grow to AMCs. By the GMF of Airbus,
the A380 is the choice number one for these markets.
The current markets situation is represented Figure 1.

The Wide-Body Aircraft is a very important aspect
of the aircraft market as well. These aircraft types
are more focused on the routes for AMCs than to the
secondary cities. This is the right market opportunity
for the highly efficient new A350XWB as well as the
A330neo by the Airbus.

1.2. Very Large Aircraft
According to Airbus statistics before the VLAs age,
one million passengers per month were served by 200
aircrafts per day. But today, it is only 100 VLA
aircrafts connecting the world’s major hub. The pas-
sengers prefer to fly on a VLA due to the high travel
comfort which only the VLA aircraft can provide.

One of the most comfortable seating configurations
is the 407 pax (passengers) on board configuration.
But also, the maximum capacity of 853 seats are a
highly desired option for airlines, which means they
have the flexibility to mix comfort with revenue and
cost per seat. But today, a typical configuration of
an A380 is between 500-520 seats in three or four
traveling class configurations. The capacity flexibility
is one of the best airline tools how to optimize the
right capacity at the right time between mature and
expanding markets and their reaction you can read
from Figure 2[2].

We can find three key reasons why the VLAs aircraft
are the future of aviation:

a) Solution to sky congestion: reducing the number
of aircrafts needed for transport of the ever-growing
air passenger volume;
b) Solution to the changing demand at different
times of the day;
c) Solution to overcrowded slots at the megacities
airports.

The standard solution, which is often implemented

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vol. 12/2017 The Future of Passenger Air Transport – Very Large Aircraft

Figure 1. Concentration of Flights in Long-Haul Markets [source: OAG, Airbus].

Figure 2. New Deliveries of VLA by Region [source: OAG, Airbus].

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Petra Skolilová Acta Polytechnica CTU Proceedings

on routes via the A380, is operating the A380 during
peak hours and other aircraft types at non-peak hours
during the day on the same routes. In fact, 50% of
airports-pairs served by the A380 have another aircraft
type in operation also. For the airlines it means to
target the right capacity at the right time during
the day, for example a combination of the A380 and
A350XWB aircraft. The main markets for the VLA
are the long-haul markets between AMCs. In these
days they are mainly on the Asia/Pacific area, where
more than 25% flights are served by the A380[2–4].

"From today until 2033, we forecast the demand for
nearly 1,230 VLA globally. The two largest markets
are Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. Asia-Pacific
will represent 47% of the demand for VLA over the
next 20 years which can be clearly seen by the large
number of VLA today flying to from and within Asia-
Pacific followed by the Middle East which today has
the largest fleet and largest backlog"[2].
By the GMF prediction we can await an annual

growth of the passenger air traffic around 4.7% and it
will assist approximately 30,555 passengers’ aircraft
during next 20 years. "This demand represents $4.4
trillion at book value over the next 20 years. Of this
demand for passenger aircraft, 40% will be for the
replacement of ageing, less fuel efficient aircraft and
60% of the demand will be for growth"[3].

2. Human Factors Training in
Aviation

Safety means different things to different people. To
the traveling public, the term ’safety’ means, at its
most fundamental level, that we want to reach our
destinations without getting hurt. Since people do
get hurt on occasion, it is logical to conclude that we
are willing to accept some risk in traveling. Whether
consciously or subconsciously, we know that there is
some chance, albeit a minute one, that we could be
hurt or killed while traveling. Today we average about
50 accidents in commercial airlines each year, but it
means that the odds of any one flight being your last
one are remote ( 1 to 4,9 million ) and given that more
people are killed or injured in automobile accidents
(approximately 44,000 deaths per year), ’safe’ is a
reasonable word to apply to commercial aviation[5].
One of the first airlines to accept the Human Fac-

tors training was Continental Airlines. They accepted
the existing format and settled the special training
called Cockpit Resource Management, evolved into
their original training initially titled "Crew Coordina-
tion Concepts", and later changed to "Maintenance
Resource Management"[6]. It covers communications
with pilots, pilots with cabin crewmembers, labor with
management, and companies with the government.
The ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organiza-

tion) is a specialized agency of the United Nations,
which codifies the principles and techniques that avia-
tion has developed and implemented a special human

factors training called SMS program: Safety Manage-
ment System. The definition of SMS: "A dynamic risk
management system based on quality management
system (QMS) principles in a structure scaled appro-
priately to the operational risk, applied in a safety
culture environment."

2.1. Human Reliability Analysis (HRA)
It is well-established that the largest contribution to
the probability of system failure in complex systems is
human error. A risk assessment method of any value in
aviation must consider human interactions and errors
on system reliability. HRA models human behavior
to better understand human interactions with the rest
of the system. A popular method used for human
performance reliability prediction is the Technique for
Human Error Rate Prediction (THERP).

THERP are model with five steps:

(1.) Define the system or process.
(2.) Identify and enumerate all human operations per-
formed and their relationships to the system.

(3.) Predict error rates for each human operation.
(4.) Determine the effect of human error on the sys-
tem.

(5.) Make changes that will reduce the system failure
rate.

PRA has been used in chemical, transport, energy,
aerospace and military. The first step in an HRA is a
study to identify the hazards and their impact on the
scale. The scale is uses fault trees (FT). The hazards
are assigned probabilities, which are propagated up
the tree to establish the probability of the undesired
top hazards.

In practice, it means that the phase of mapping the
hazards and human failures is followed by a practical
modeling scenario with deductive logic and proba-
bilistic tools called Fault Trees (FT). The FT are
composed of three levels: the top level called type of
accident which defines the accident scenario, the mid-
dle level are the intermediate failures causing the top
level and the basic level are the failures that cause the
top level to occur. Developing the scenario is a highly
sophisticated method with extreme dependency on
source data of the model and good subject knowledge.
It could be supported by probabilistic software tools.

3. Conclusion
In these days, more than 300 Airbus A-380 are in ser-
vice operating under the flags of 13 carriers: Singapore
Airlines, Emirates, Qantas, Air France, Lufthansa, Ko-
rean Air, China Southern Airlines, Malaysia Airlines,
Thai Airways International, British Airways, Asiana
Airlines, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways using air-
ports all over the world. One part of responsibility for
passengers’ security is on airport management, how
to manage the airports runways, taxiways, gate areas

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and terminals to accommodate this large and heavy
aircraft and more than 700 pax per flight. What has
resulted has been a relatively seamless, trouble-free
adaptation on the part of airports, which reflects the
results of thoughtful planning and analysis.

The other part is the human factor. Commercial air
carriers continue to restructure. The world’s economic
downturn beginning in 2008 forced many air carriers
out of business and other to consolidate. As a result,
air traffic management has had to, and will continue
to, become more flexible in its contractual obligations
with air carriers, their aeronautical revenue structures,
and increasingly the use of their facilities.

In the past, aviation safety improvements were char-
acterized by a fly-crash-fix-fly approach. Sometimes
the causes would be weather-related or a mechanical
failure, but more often the causes would be determined
to be human factor error – usually the pilot. Today we
realize that it is much more productive to engineer a
system in which causes of failure have been prevented.
As one might imagine, there are many elements to this
engineering effort. The understanding of hazard iden-
tification, risk management, system theory, human
factors engineering, organizational culture, quality
engineering and management, quantitative methods
and decision theory must have a pillar in aviation
development.
The requirement for VLAs will grow with the

world’s network and as more people have the ability
to fly. By 2032, this demand will result in a need for
more than 1,300 VLAs. Given the projected growth in
Asia-Pacific, both economic and air passenger traffic
growth, the region’s demographics and urbanization
trends, it is unsurprising that the region’s airlines will
take 47% of these aircraft over the next 20 years. The
Middle East will be the second largest region in terms
of demand for VLAs, at 26%. This can be seen to-
day in the size of the backlog of A380s within Middle
Eastern carriers[3].

References
[1] S. Young. Airport: Planning & Management 6th

Edition. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2011.
[2] A. 2015. AIRBUS. [Online], Přístup získán MAY 2015.
[3] IATA. The International Air Transport Association.
[Online]. Available:
http://www.iata.org/about/Pages/index.aspx.
Accessed MAR 2015.

[4] WTTC. World Travel & Tourism Council. [Online].
Available: www.wttc.org. Přístup získán MAR 2015.

[5] The Economist Group. [Online]. Available:
http://www.eiu.com/home.aspx. Přístup získán APR
2015.

[6] R. Stanley, R. Trollip. Human Factors for General
Aviation. Jeppesen Sanderson, 2011.

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http://www.iata.org/about/Pages/index.aspx
www.wttc.org
http://www.eiu.com/home.aspx

	Acta Polytechnica CTU Proceedings 12:104–107, 2017
	1 Introduction
	1.1 Introduction of the Air traffic markets situation
	1.2 Very Large Aircraft

	2 Human Factors Training in Aviation
	2.1 Human Reliability Analysis (HRA)

	3 Conclusion
	References