A Decision Making Model and Its Application to Airplane Accidents

A simple formula of a decision making process is introduced and applied to airplane accidents: a near-miss case of Douglas DC-10-40 with Boeing 747-400D in 2001 and a collision between Tupolev 154M and Boeing 757-200 cargo jet in 2002. The decision making process is shown as the plot of lnln (1-y)-1 versus lnt with phase-change ratio, y and time, t and thus, it shows the diffusion law when the plot is linear. The flight data focused on altitude from cruising to descending is applied to the model and a clear phase-change is demonstrated. The timing of the phase-change means the “decision making” point and is estimated as timing for pilots to start to perform maneuvers. This model may be applied to a large number of cases related to the human factors on decision making.