Abstract
While aviation represents one of the most conspicuous technological achievements in the 20th century, its history is an incessant struggle against risk of flight. In comparison with early days of commercial jet transport, aviation safety has remarkably been improved today. Yet an aviation accident remains to be an event of major sociopsychological impact. The present paper discusses human factors, involved in 70% of air accidents, and improved design and manufacture of high-reliability hardware, as requirements for achieving an accident rate less than one in 10 million flight hours.
