The Senior Maintainers Downfall: Complacency

The Senior Maintainers Downfall: Complacency

Corbin Tash

BSAS 210 Intro to Aerospace Safety

Dr. Sarah Talley

April 19th, 2026

        A large portion of the human factors in aviation safety are more common to happen with new, inexperienced aviation personnel due to the technical nature and possibility of being overwhelmed in the being of a career in aviation. The factor I will be discussing today is unique in the fact that it more often affects Senior personnel due to what it is. Directly from the Merriam-Webster website, Complacency is defined as ":a calm sense of well-being and security : the quality or state of being satisfied especially : satisfaction or self-satisfaction accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies". In aviation, Complacency is the result of constantly performing routine tasks, having a high degree of knowledge on an assigned task, or overconfidence in ones abilities. This factor is extremely dangerous in aviation safety because it can lead to other human factors and erodes the trust that others have in maintainers when an incident occurs due to complacency.

        In my current line of work as an avionics technician working on H-60 Blackhawk's, there are tasks that I have performed hundreds of times across multiple configurations and models of these helicopters. Many of these tasks have become nearly second nature and I have considered not using our maintenance manuals to reference off of if I encounter a new issue or check to ensure a troubleshooting procedure has not changed. The reason that makes me pause and grab the manual before starting any task is an issue I witnessed between six and seven years ago.

        On the newer models of H-60's we have a system called the Electronic Standby Instrument Set (ESIS). This instrument set has a power supply for itself that requires annual testing. The power supply is charged, discharged, and recharged on the bench to ensure it is working. The discharge procedure involves attaching a large resistor to two pins on the back for twenty minutes. Unfortunately, there is more pins than just the two that you need to plug the resistor into and if you touch the wrong ones you can brick the power supply and incur a replacement. I witnessed a coworker attaching the resistors leads to the wrong terminals and a very dramatic pop and flash of light confirmed that the power supply had just arced and flash welded the resistors leads to the incorrect pins of the power supply.

        The part about this incident that makes me stop and grab a manual before working is that the power supply in question is expensive for basically being a battery, requires a minimum of 24 hours for the full procedure, and it is not usually on hand for replacement. All of this means that a failure to ensure a task is being completed properly can cause an aircraft to be down longer than needed awaiting a replacement part that it should not have needed because of the complacency of one maintainer.

        No amount of pride or confidence in my abilities will push me to make a choice that could lead to me making a mistake that will cause my abilities to be questioned and my judgement devalued. I must hold myself to a higher standard if I am ever going to hold back the tide of Complacency that is always around the corner.

References

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Complacency. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved April 18, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/complacency