Application of Dupont’s Dirty Dozen Framework to Commercial Aviation Maintenance Incidents

Abstract

Twelve preconditions for maintenance errors, commonly known as the Dirty Dozen, were applied to actual incident and accident data provided by a participating airline.  Specifically, 25 Maintenance Event Reports (MERs) (reactive) and 60 Maintenance Operations Safety Assessment (MOSA) reports (proactive) were coded by aviation maintenance subject matter experts using the 12 Dirty Dozen categories as the coding scheme.  Results revealed not only the presence of each Dirty Dozen category to some degree, but also the difference in sensitivity of the MER (reactive) and MOSA (proactive) to the 12 Dirty Dozen categories.  Recommendations for practice and future research are discussed.