Topic :
‘With the exception of wilful criminal acts, an aircraft accident should not be criminalized as criminalization of aviation accidents serves no useful purpose.’ Critically discuss.
Your essay needs have an:
Abstract
Introduction
Body of essay
Discussion/Conclusion
References using APA style
Abstract
Should be approximately 150 – 250 words in length and reflect the whole of the essay including the results.
An example of an abstract
The Herald of Free Enterprise accident resulted in a number of prosecutions including the Captain and Bosun and other staff, the company and the designers. In the end the seaman whose job it was to close the bow doors was the one held accountable for the accident.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of blaming the person who committed the ‘active error’ – that is the final chink in the defence that caused the accident to happen. Would this prevent the accident from happening again or are their other organisational defences that failed?
This paper considers the accident as it evolved with the facts of what happened on the day and examines the organisational factors that contributed to the accident including the design of the ship, previous incidents that could have indicated flaws in the system, the inability of the Captain to observe what was happening on the car deck, the company pressure for on time departures and the chain of command that all contributed to this accident.
The paper will conclude with a number of assertions that nothing will be learned from this accident by blaming the person who didn’t shut the bow doors and, indeed where further accidents have happened since by the company not implementing the recommendations of the commission set up to examine the accident.
223 words
Introduction
Approx 100 words.
Describe what you are going to say in the essay, how you will say it and what you intend the reader to know from the essay.
For instance you would introduce the accidents you are using, information about the court case that followed and the discussion you intend to make about criminalisation of the pilot/operator.
Body of Essay
For this assignment I would recommend splitting the essay into 3 parts:
Part 1 – briefly describe the philosophy around criminalisation of aviation professionals. This can be fairly descriptive and should be about 400 – 500 words. You can relate the theory to an accident(s) if you wish to. You can discuss legal procedures / legal system that followed the accident / consequences to individual / airline etc.,
Part 2 – describe the one point of view and support with your research and academic journals / articles etc. This is descriptive and you can outline and discuss various views on this point. You should reflect your knowledge of the law learned in the course as well as illustrate your research on this point. About 600 – 700 words.
Part 3 – discuss whether criminalisation of the pilot/operator affects aviation safety and if it does, does it affect it positively or negatively. For ex., does it prevent a similar incident occurring? This is the major part of your essay and requires you to be analytical and give a balanced view of whether ‘pilot/operator error’ ensures safety. In this part you need to bring in research from journal articles that debate this. About 600 – 700 words
Prominent authors in this field are inter alia, Sidney Dekker, Erik Hollnagel, Sofia Michaelides-Mateou & Andreas Mateou, Don Harris. .
Discussion/Conclusion
Sum up what you have said in the essay and give your opinion at this stage as to whether or not criminalisation of aviation accidents serves a useful purpose. Here you can sum up and may conclude that, perhaps, it does / does not serve a useful purpose to society but that criminalisation of the pilot/operator etc., would / would not result in safer flight. About 200 words.
Reference list
This should be on a separate (new) page to the rest of the document and each reference should be in alphabetical order. If you look on googlescholar.com you will find under each description a ‘cite’ button. Second reference is APA style. Press this and it will give you the full reference in APA style for the article.
You may include a Bibliography which is in the same style as the reference list but contains articles or books you have read but not used within the article. This shows a wide range of reading.