American Airlines Flight 1420 Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

American Airlines Flight 1420 - Research Paper Example , underscore several key human factor failures and investigate how each of them generated some other failures by that creating a chain of errors that finally materialized to the accident. We shall address safety recommendations that would prove useful in the air travel industry. The findings regarding the accident of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82 (MD-82), N215AA reveal a situation that featured 2 flight crew members. It involved four flight attendants and 139 passengers (Aircraft accident report, 2001). The death toll hit 11, a tally that featured the captain and ten passengers. There were serious and minor injuries featuring 105 passengers, the first officer, and flight attendants. 24 passengers sustained no injuries (Aircraft accident report, 2001). The plane suffered destruction from impact forces plus post-crash fire (Aircraft accident report, 2001). Details regarding the crew operating American Airlines flight 1420 affirm that the captain and first officer were certified and qualified under the federal and company requirements. They were medically fit to conduct the flight with no tangible evidence of pre-existing conditions that would have adversely altered their performance. They were placed in charge of an equipped, certified and well-maintained aircraft with no evidence to suggest pre-existing failures of the engine and the entire system (Aircraft accident report, 2001). All decisions and outcomes were thus dependent on the flight crew soon after the departure. The accident was prompted partly by human mishap.The findings suggest that the initial decision to descend into the terminal area was marred by an approaching thunderstorm. However, the crew were rational enough to imagine that they would reach that particular area before the thunderstorm (Aircraft accident report, 2001). The weather factor poses a potential threat to the safety of the entire flight. But decisions regarding a last minute change of course of action would only happen when there is

Analysis of Heart of Darkness Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Analysis of Heart of Darkness - Essay Example Referred to as the â€Å"dark continent†, Africa was one of the world’s ‘dark places’ that the Europeans had colonized by the 1890s. It is perceived in other the places (Africa, England and Brussels) that Conrad describes as depressing, dark areas. Darkness symbolizes the unknown, gaining power because we are afraid to find out what it is hiding from us (for example, in Section 2, Part II, when Marlow’s steamer enters an oppressive fog bank resulting in blurring and distortion of vision, the men aboard it are terrified when they hear a high-pitched scream followed by a clamor of savage voices; their terror emanates from their knowledge that danger is lurking somewhere in the foggy darkness, but they are unable to see it or gauge its potency (http://www.novelguide.com/heartofdarkness/index.html). It is the metaphoric meaning of darkness that is more prevalent throughout the novel. Conrad refers to darkness as the human inability to see beyond another individual’s personal faà §ade, and the inability to understand the feelings of that individual, both of which lead to inability to establish any sort of mutual understanding or sympathetic interaction with that person. Darkness is compelling and alluring. Unknown danger has always been a magnet that has drawn humans to dare and explore it. In the context of the novel, darkness conceals unknown dangers in Africa that Europeans dare to tackle for the rewards it would bring. To the company men, the reward is material wealth represented by ivory; to Marlow, the African darkness conceals adventure, this being the main reason he traveled to that place due to a map he came across (Section 1, Part I), depicting the region as unexplored land (http://www.novelguide.com/heartofdarkness/index.html). Darkness is used as a cloak to conceal acts of savagery. Conrad suggests that such a cloak of darkness can camouflage savage acts that would be impossible to contemplate in European civilization. For example, Kurtz