An airworthiness SHELL model for aircraft maintenance

It is widely accepted that human errors rather than technical failures have the greatest potential to adversely affect contemporary aviation safety. In order to have a better understanding of how human factors and errors in aircraft maintenance may contribute to an aircraft accident/incident, a new human factor classification scheme, the A-SHELL Model (Airworthiness-Software-Hardware-Environment-Liveware), has been developed. Based on airworthiness regulations, the generic human factor model is aimed to identify less-than-satisfactory interactions between various components of the system and the aircraft maintenance staff. In the model, airworthiness has been incorporated to bind all the crucial SHELL Model elements together. The purpose is to provide a better compliance with airworthiness regulations, which in turn would enhance aviation safety. This paper outlined the impact of human factor on airworthiness compliance in aircraft maintenance and an application of A-SHELL model is demonstrated through a case study.