AT A GLANCE: We were asked to testify at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) public hearings on two recent high-profile airline accidents: Colgan Air flight 3407 and US Airways flight 1549. We were able to draw on a broad range of human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) studies to explain the challenges pilots face in accident scenarios and the reasons for vulnerability to error. In this article, we discuss the format for NTSB public hearings and how we approached the presentation of our HF/E findings.
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