Why Aircraft Maintenance Technicians Sometimes Do Not Use Their Maintenance Documents: Towards a New Qualitative Perspective

The aim of this article is to present an exploratory study aiming to understand the use of maintenance documentation by the technicians in the aircraft maintenance context and why they do not systematically use it. We seek to establish a global model based on the results. Previous studies can provide us with an understanding of why aircraft maintenance technicians sometimes do not follow the requisite procedure. Here we use these empirical data and psychological models as a framework, and consider the use by an aircraft maintenance technician of a document specifically as an information-seeking task and as a secondary task. A qualitative survey involving 13 maintenance technicians was conducted, with observations and semidirected interviews. The survey gives preliminary results about why, when, and how technicians use their maintenance documents, and why they sometimes do not use them although they are required to do so. Thus, the decision by an aircraft technician to use or not use a prescribed document in a maintenance operation should be viewed in terms of a conflict among 3 priorities: safety, legality, and efficiency. However, the explorative nature of the study involves the need to deal with the issue in depth. It could allow to validate or not the conflict of the three priorities. The results presented here could be the basis for further study to this purpose.