This book seeks to extend the boundaries of aviation psychology in two interrelated ways: by broadening the focus of aviation psychology beyond the flight deck to the whole aviation system; and by discussing new theoretical developments which are shaping this applied discipline. A key feature of these theoretical advances is that they are grounded in a more developed, ecologically valid, understanding of practice. Among the issues addressed in this new integration of theory and practice are the following: what goes on in the flight deck is dependent on the wider organisational context; human factors issues in aircraft maintenance and grounding are critical to aviation safety; our capacity to learn from aviation accidents and incidents needs to be supported by more systematic human factors investigation and research; we must also develop our understanding of the human factors of accident survival as well as accident prevention; theories of crew coordination and decision making must be s
