Introduction to Aeronautical Science

     Without a doubt, September 11 of 2001 was a day that changed the world forever. It shook millions upon millions around the world and left the aviation community in shock and pain. Therefore, the actions taken after 9/11 played a large role in shaping the aviation world that we know today. The Aviation and Transportation Security Act was introduced in U.S. Congress on September 21st and became law on November 19th of 2001 (Aviation and Transportation, 2001).      Within this legislation came many changes to the aviation industry, namely advancements in security. From this Act came the idea of TSA with "day-to-day Federal security screening operations for passenger air transportation" being noted (Aviation and Transportation, 2001, Section 101). Screening required that ANYTHING, whether that be people or objects, had to pass through a security screening before being released into the secure area of an airport to prevent weapons or terrorists from even ge...

      Humans play a massive role in the aviation industry. Therefore, human decisions and actions are naturally extremely important when it comes to many different situations within aviation. Humans and their impact when making decisions or taking actions within their job in aviation are considered human factors. Or, as the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority describes, "issues whether personal, social, environment or organization that affect how people perform tasks in their work reductions" (Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority, n.d., para. 1). One of the most important  considerations within aviation human factors is the concept of human error and looking into how the risk of error can be reduced in the future. (Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority, n.d.).     One of the areas that work to address the reduction of human error within aviation, particularly amongst the flight crew, is crew resource management (CRM). Crew resource managem...

When thinking of TSA security practices, most of us think about how effective they are in addressing threats from people not associated with the airport. But I had to wonder, what would happen if a threat came from an employee within the airport - a TSA agent, no less. In the freak case that a maliciously-intent employee would have slipped through the cracks to become a TSA employee or if a disgruntled employee saw a reason to threaten the airport, would the TSA have a plan to handle that situation? Thankfully and not surprisingly, the TSA does acknowledge this possibility and has plans set up to try to mitigate the risk and/or address the situation if a threat does exist. The TSA calls this an insider threat, describing that as "a n individual with authorized access to sensitive areas and/or information, will wittingly or unwittingly misuse or allow others to  misuse this access to exploit vulnerabilities in an effort to compromise security, facilitate criminal activity, terroris...