Multimodality in transport accidents: challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Advances in air transport accident investigation have been prodigious and have made a major contribution to the safety of the industry. This has allowed aviation to climb successive rungs on the safety ladder as a result of accident analysis. 

This article summarises, in a necessarily summarised way and from an international perspective, how the pillars that contributed to aviation's success have become challenges to maintaining the contribution of accident investigation in the face of the minority and incipient - but growing and irreversible - trend towards the integration of multi-modal investigation bodies, while outlining the opportunities for improvement that such challenges present.