A Case Study on Workload and Time Pressure in Aircraft Maintenance

The aim of this study is to examine an aircraft incident that occurred due to the workload and time pressure in the aircraft maintenance from the view of the human factor. The case study method, one of the qualitative research designs, was used in the study. It was seen that this aircraft incident occurred because the maintenance technician didn’t install the right landing gear shimmy damper line to the main hydraulic system during the replacement of the main landing gear of the aircraft and the supervisor didn’t control this maintenance operation. For this reason, after the first flight of the aircraft following this maintenance, when the aircraft put a wheel on the runway, a hard vibration was felt on the right landing gear, the aircraft deviated to the right and serious damage occurred in the right main landing gear. When the main root causes of the event are examined, it is seen that over workload and time pressure affect maintenance technician and supervisor performance and cause human factor errors. It can be said that the study is important because of the fact that it deals with a real aircraft incident, shows how the human factor errors in this event puts flight safety at risk and contributes to the literature related to the aircraft maintenance