Presentation
Teamwork Turbulence: Lessons for Multi-Team Systems from a Decade of Aviation Accident Reports
SessionPoster Session 2
DescriptionEven in 2025, aviation accidents related to ineffective teamwork continue to be reported in the news, highlighting persistent challenges within the industry. Despite decades of aviation safety and team science research, a critical gap remains in understanding one of the most complex aspects of aviation teaming—multi-team systems (MTSs). This work aims to address this research gap by investigating teamwork breakdowns within the aviation MTS, specifically focusing on the interaction between pilots and air traffic control (ATC). Through analyzing archival accident reports from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) within the past decade, this research seeks to uncover the underlying causal factors that contribute to aviation accidents using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS). However, currently no comprehensive error framework exists for analyzing MTS-specific attributes in aviation. Although the HFACS does not specifically focus on MTSs, it does highlight teamwork as a personnel factor that can contribute to human error. As such, this work aims to investigate MTS-specific errors through a proposed theoretical extension to the HFACS framework. Finally, this work aims to gather insights from this analysis to propose data-driven practical recommendations to support safety and team effectiveness.
Event Type
Poster
TimeWednesday, October 15th5:30pm - 6:30pm CDT
LocationRiverside East