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In aviation, a source of stress that comes from the environment is known as environmental stressor. Stress is defined as a situation, variable, or circumstance that interrupt the ‘normal’ operation of individuals and, most of time, it also cause threat. Furthermore, the stress is not only related to mental health, but also related to physical health. Operating in aviation environments brings combination of stressors, which varies in composition and strength, and it produce pressure on crew members. In aviation industry, the main Environmental Stressors are ‘time pressure’, ‘workload & Overload’, ‘fatigue’, ‘noise’, and ‘temperature’. Furthermore, environmental stressors are proved to be interconnected which indicates presence of any one of stressor will cause other stressors to occur. In order to counteract to environmental stress, scientists studied each stressor and investigated how to avoid effect of each stress in order to minimize overall influence of environmental stressor.〔 In this page, cause of each environmental stressor and aviation industry's effort to minimize the effect of stress in order to maintain pilot's efficient performance will be discussed. == Environmental Stressor == In February 12, 2009, Colgan Air flight 3407, from Newark, New Jersey to Buffalo, New York, the airplane, Bombardier Dash-8 Q400, stalled and crashed into the ground. This accident resulted in killing both pilots, flight attendants and all 45 passengers in the flight. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reported that this accident is due to fatigue. Prior to this flight, both pilots had another long flight which created fatigue. This situation caused workload during the flight on February 12, 2009 which led to decreasing pilot's operation. This accident reveals that the stressors are connected each other and existence of one stress will create another. The main Environmental Stressors are 'time pressure', 'workload & Overload', 'fatigue', 'noise', and ‘temperature’. Those stressor cause both mental and physical stress. Scientist introduced some approaches to minimize stress and maintain performances of pilots in the cockpit.〔 === Time pressure === Time pressure occurs when crew member is under pressure of time limit on the task or operation. For instance, China is experiencing increasing demand in air travel, so airlines in China are attempting to offer additional services flights with expectancy of high quality service. Increasing in demand brings pressure on crew member to work longer with tighter schedule which also cause time pressure. Therefore, time pressure stress produces higher chances of the human error. Former head of the University of Illinois Urbana-Campaign Human Factors Division, Christopher Wickens, also revealed a relationship between error rate and response time. As the pilot scan instrument panel rapidly under the time pressure, the accuracy of pilots’ perception will be lower and possibility of error will increase.〔 In addition, James Reason, researcher of human error, reported that the time pressure cause the possibility of human error to be increased by eleven-fold. There are a lot of sources of aviation stress that cause time pressure. According to sample of Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), tight scheduling is the most common cause of time pressure, and the traffic-jammed Fixed-Base Operator (FBO) is the second most common reason of aviation stress.〔 There are vast sources that cause time pressure and those are listed below. The ASRS report revealed that there is a linear progression on sources of time pressure, so one follows another. Sources of the Time Pressure:〔 The sources of time pressure are impossible to avoid, and researchers study aviation time pressure in order to minimize the human error. One recommendation from the Battelle study is "maintaining an awareness of the potential for the hurry-up syndrome in pre-flight and taxi-out operational phases."〔 Pilots should be careful if they face time pressure, and they need to spend some time on prioritizing and re-evaluating their performances. Furthermore, use of checklist is highly recommended. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Environmental causes of aviation stress」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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