Increased Stress In Aviation Maintenance Technicians - Paper Example

The study shall examine the aircraft accidents caused by errors in decision making and result in property loss and fatalities on a global scale. The aviation repair technician has a great influence on aviation safety (Santos & Melicio, 2019). This study will, therefore, be phenomenological in the exploration of the lived experiences in aviation repairs. There were an estimated 7000 aircrafts that were repaired in 2014 (Santos & Melicio, 2019). Those are numbers recorded in the 4800 repair facilities in America. Repairs were carried out by estimated 128,570 technicians for the carriers that were operating in the domestic field. Aviation technicians make numerous decisions in line with the aircraft's modification and repair (Santos & Melicio, 2019). Those decisions have a great impact on aviation safety in general.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Some of the factors that influence the aviation technician decision making are stress, complacency, fatigue, and the work environment (Wang et al. 2016). They are observed to cause serious errors and have led to aircraft accidents. Aviation maintenance task is stressful since the aircraft make money flying and not when they are tended to the hangar. Hence, there is very great stress in the finishing of the maintenance in a short time as well as getting the aircraft functional and flyable to avoid flight delays and their cancellations. During the maintenance exercises, there is a need to have one become careful in using correct tools and work on the correct parts if the tight parts are inclusive.

Stress can be self-imposed through the increase of one’s self-expectations, making them work even harder than they are expected towards the completion of the maintenance job in the expected time (Wang et al. 2016). Stress may also be experienced in the manner in which the manager uses in the organization of the employees. The manager may stress the engineers by failure to have the people skills for effective communication of information to them and those on the hangar floor. That can lead to fatalities, where 429 fatalities out of the recorded 1298 aviation's in 2013 in the USA (Wang et al. 2016).

Human errors have been observed to be the cause of about 80% of the aircraft accidents, as well as the observed mishaps by (Yazgan & Kavsaoglu, 2017). The stresses should never be ignored, and it is critical to understand some of the causes of stress or stressors. One of the sources is the physical stressors that add due to the workload to the personals, making it uncomfortable for them to work in the environment. Such physical stressors are such as high temperatures, low temperatures in the hangar that increase the perspiration as well as the heart rate that causes overheating of the body. The low temperatures may cause body weakening and the feeling of being drowsy. Poor lighting may also be a physical stressor that might make it difficult for the technicians to read the technical data and the manuals while they are working on the aircraft. That may increase the propensity of missing important things.

In conclusion, Yazgan & Kavsaoglu (2017) demonstrates some other physiological stressors, which are either work-related or financial constraints such as bankruptcy and loans to pay. Other psychological stresses, such as marital and interpersonal problems, should also be considered.

References

Santos, L., & Melicio, R. (2019). Stress, pressure, and fatigue on aircraft maintenance personal. http://hdl.handle.net/10174/26911

Wang, Y., Keller, J. C., Huang, C., & Fanjoy, R. O. (2016). An exploratory study: Correlations between occupational stressors, coping mechanisms, and job performance among Chinese aviation maintenance technicians. Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering, 5(2), 6. https://doi.org/10.7771/2159-6670.1129

Yazgan, E., & Kavsaoglu, M. S. (2017). Evaluation of stress affecting aircraft maintenance technician" s performance. International Journal of Computing, Communications & Instrumentation Engineering, 4(1), 2349-1469. http://iieng.org/images/proceedings_pdf/IAE12162051.pdf