Safety has grown over time because of human factors, says aviation expert Amit Singh

In the book “mindFly – Follies, Realities & Human Factors,” veteran pilot and aviation safety expert Captain Amit Singh offers a rare and incisive look into the psychology of flying. With over three decades of experience across global cockpits and airline leadership roles, Singh doesn’t just recount aviation events—he dissects the human mind behind the controls.

At the heart of THE BOOK lies an urgent premise: 80% of aviation accidents can be traced back to human error. Rather than pointing fingers, Singh invites us into the mental cockpit, analyzing stress, overconfidence, fatigue, poor communication, and the myriad cognitive biases that shape pilot behavior.

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Veteran pilot and aviation safety expert Captain Amit Singh, author of mindFly – Follies, Realities & Human Factors, believes that while technology has advanced, the human factor is still at the heart of both the problem and the solution.

When asked about the common attribution of aviation accidents to human error and whether such incidents were not reported in earlier times due to lack of internet, he offered a layered response, saying that, “Safety has grown over time because of human factors. Humans continue to make errors and violations—there could always be a slip or a lapse. When we are dealing with machines, specialists in human-machine interfaces often say that the human is at fault.”

Captain Singh believes the aviation industry often over-relies on engineering solutions to address what are essentially behavioral issues. He said that “there is no need to keep paying for engineering controls every time something goes wrong, and said that we have to invest in human beings rather than technology.”

Captain Singh is adamant that without developing human insight and resilience, software updates and system upgrades are just temporary fixes. “Tech is a short-term fix,” he said. “The human is a long-term fix. If we change the way we think, we adapt better. Technology keeps changing, so we need to prepare the younger generation accordingly,” he added.