Development and initial validation of a survey for assessing safety culture within commercial flight operations

This article describes efforts to validate a safety culture survey for aviation operations based on the 5-factor model suggested by Wiegmann, Zhang, von Thaden, Gibbons, and Sharma (2004). The 5-factor model includes organizational commitment, management involvement, pilot empowerment, reporting systems, and accountability systems as they pertain to safety within an airline. The Commercial Aviation Safety Survey, designed around these 5 factors, was distributed to pilots and managers of a large U.S. airline for anonymous completion. A total of 503 completed surveys were obtained for further analysis (29% return rate). Results of a series of confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the original 5-factor model of safety culture did not fit as well as hypothesized. Additional exploratory analyses were then conducted to determine specific areas of misalignment of the data with the model. Results from these analyses and respondent comments informed a conceptual revision of the model and survey. The new model contains 4 main factors and 11 subfactors. A revised version of the survey, following the revised model, is presented. Additional issues identified include the need to account for the atypical structure of management-employee relationships in airline flight operations compared to the structure of other traditional industrial settings in which the concept of safety culture originated.