Investigating aviation safety factors and proposed conceptual model for safety behaviors among Thai flight crews: A qualitative approach

Abstract

This study aims to answer behavioral safety questions regarding influential factors and relationship among those factors relating to Thai flight crews’ safety behaviors, and the objective of this study is to develop a proposed hypotheses relating to factors affecting Thai flight crews’ safety behaviors for future research. Based on a sample of 21 flight crews and executives in Thailand, the result found that influential factors relating to Thai flight crew safety behaviors were organizational safety climate, fleet safety climate, aviation safety knowledge, aviation psychological safety and flight crews’ safety attitudes and personalities. Flight time was considered as a typical job experience and did not directly reflect the safety behaviors among flight crews. What reflected safety behaviors among flight crews were their own safety attitudes and personalities. Therefore, it would be proposed that organizational safety climate, fleet safety climate and flight attitudes and personalities played antecedent roles and aviation safety knowledge and aviation psychological safety played mediating roles. Future studies can possibly use the result from this study to formulate further hypotheses and apply the proposed conceptual model for quantitative analysis.