The Use of Accident Statistics to Influence Simulator Design

The causes of aircraft accidents during low level operations may be categorized into five areas. These are vision, attention, knowledge, judgment, and discipline. The thesis presented in this paper is that for simulators to be effective in reducing the aircraft accident rate, they must provide training in at least one (and preferably all) of these areas. This training must include experience in preventing the occurrence of hazardous conditions, in recognizing the hazardous conditions as they develop, and in taking the appropriate corrective action to prevent an accident. For the student, all of this requires appropriate inputs, realistic scenarios, opportunity for errors, and immediate feedback on the consequences of those errors. For the instructor, there is a need to provide information on the causes of errors.