Content Page

1. Introduction
2. Personal experience and Perspective
3. Research Topic and Field
4. Locating Research Literature
5. Literature Review
6. Research Hypothesis
7. Research Purpose and Audience
8. References

Introduction
The objective research of this research is to explore and understand the impact on how air safety can
have on the tourism and aviation industry. Firstly the report will begin a personal experiences and
perspective by the researcher, following after will be a brief explanation as to why there is an interest into
this subject.
Subsequently, the research topic and field and the locating of research literature will point into the specific
area where the materials will be sourced. As this area is both relevant to the tourism and aviation industry,
the key words in locating the research materials will be listed down in this section.
Next up, a literature review will be conducted on the articles that is related to the topic. This area will
illustrate some examples of airline accidents and the impact it can have on the travellers and destination.
Examples of the airline accident includes, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, missing Malaysian
Airlines MH370, the shooting down of MH 17 and the crushing of TransAsia Airway flight 235 in Taiwan.
After the literature review has been conducted, a research hypothesis is generated along with the targeted
audience been identified for the research.
Personal experiences & perspective
With the rise in the number of air incidents happening in recent years, this has lead me and the people
around me having some thoughts over if is still safe to travel overseas?
In a report the Malaysian Airlines MH370 lost contact with the control tower shortly after taking off from the
Kunla Lumper International Airport, has caused a big uproar in the airlines industry since last year. Despite a
collaboration between various countries in conducting an international search in the southern Indian Ocean
till now, search and rescue was once again proved to be futile even after more than a year of searching. The
aircraft which carried a total number of 239 passengers including crewmembers were missing and presumed
to be dead (BBC News 2015).

After a few months later in that year, on the 17 th July, a Malaysian Airline plane MH17 was being shot down
at Ukraine by the rebels after they have mistook it as an enemy aircraft. All 298 passenger and crewmembers
on board the aircraft were killed, leaving no survivors of the incident (BBC News, 2015)
Earlier this year on the 4th of February, TransAsian Airways flight 235 carrying 58 passenger and crew
crashed into a river of Taiwan, killing at least 23 people (theguardian n.d). Data from the black box of the
plane has indicated that there was a malfunction in the engine fuel supply and the pilots shut down the
engine in an attempt to restart it but it was not successful leading to the plane crashed in seconds (BBC
News 2015).
In less than 2 months, a Germanwings plane carrying 150 passengers and crewmembers crushed into the
French Alps while it is on its ways from Barcelona to Duesseldorf leaving no survivors. The cause of the
crash is unknown but is assumed to be an accident as the plane did no send out any distress signal during an
eight-minute descent (BBC News 2015).
In just less than a year, there were more than 4 incidents in the airline industry due to different
circumstances. With so many passengers and crewmembers losing their lives in such a short period of time,
travellers around me has begins to wonder and have a second thoughts about the safety of the aviation
industry.
Research topic & field
As the interest of this subject simulates both airline safety and safety in travelling, this research will be
focused on both the safety of the airline industry and tourism sectors.

Locating Research Literature

Research materials for the literature review in the upcoming section will be news articles from various
websites, books and academically peer-reviewed journals articles. The journals articles would be from
Murdoch University online library and Google Scholar as well. The keywords in locating the related articles
and journals includes, air incident and impact on the aviation safety.

Literature Review
There are many articles that are on the issues of air safety and how some of the impact of air incidents and
accidents can have on the tourism industry.
According to Fleischer (2012), flying is one of the essential transportation that can used to enhance the
tourism experience for many tourist destination. However, Van Gerwen and Diekstra (2000) discover that
there is an increased in travellers suffering fear of flying (FOF), which means that using air transportation
can cause stress and unpleasant experience for them. A study by Capafons (1999) shows that approximately
half of the population that suffer from FOF to a certain extent may not want to fly at all.
Van Gerwen (2004) stated that the increasing number of travellers suffering from fear of flying is due to the
incident that happened on the September 11, 2001 (9/11) as the main factor was cause of terrorism. This
caused a significant decrease in the demand for air travel as a mean of transportation due to a series of
exposure by the media about the 9/11 incident (Ito and Lee 2005).
Travellers that suffered fear of flying has also change their pattern in choosing their flights. Travellers now
will not only choose flight based on just the price, the level of service and convenience but also includes
some attributes that will help in alleviate their fate such as the reputation and the history of the airlines
(Fleischer 2012).
A research study conducted by Carlsson (2004) has identified that most people are willing to pay more for
risk reduction when they choose to travel by air as compared to travel by land and sea. This implies that
people in general will have a certain amount of fear despite on how low the risk is involved. As mentioned
by Carlosson (2004) people tend to feel more insecure when travelling by air than any other mode of
transportation.
People tend to overestimates certain risks about travelling by air, especially the ones that have large media
coverage such as flight incidents and accidents (Carlosson 2004). In short, this can result in travellers having

fear even before they plan or choose which flight or destination they want to go, thus affecting the tourism
industry in the long run.
The safety of commercial air travel has attracted major attention in regards to airline deregulation, an
increase in concern that the safety records of the historical superiority of U.S jet carriers has been linked
with economic regulation by the Civil Aeronautics Board (Rose and Nacy 1992). A finding by Rose (1992),
there are mainly 4 factors that attracted the attention from economist, firstly has the airline safety been
compromised since deregulation? Second, how has it affect the safety of travellers in general? Third what are
the differences in the safety measurement in different aircraft? And lastly, what are the impact it can bring to
the market because of airline accidents?
Traveling by air can be considered as one of the safer way of transportation, however there are still major
accidents that can result in loss of many life (Castillo 2012). An example of the incident that is mentioned in
the Castillo (2012) article was that Spanair flight JKK5022 crushed when taking off that resulted in a death
toll of 154.
Air incidents are normally divided into planned and unplanned. Planned incidents are normally associated
with terrorism and one of the example is the hijacking of Singapore Airlines flight SQ 117 on the 26 th March
1991. The plane was hijacked by 4 passengers who claimed to be members of the Pakistan Peoples Party
and threaten to blow up the plane if they land in Singapore. Due to the plane not having enough fuel to fly to
Sydney which the hijackers has instructed, they were forced to refuel in Singapore. They make several
demands to the Singapore government but was denied. In the last attempt to get their their demand met, they
resort to countdown by killing each hostage every 10 minutes, thankfully the Singapore armed forces were
able to control the situation and there were no casualties (National Library Board 2015). Unplanned air
incident are normally due to bad weather or malfunction in the system of the aircraft, one of the example
would be the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 that lost contact and went missing till his day (BBC News
2015).
According to a finding by Ito and Lee (2005), the U.S airline industry suffered a great economic damage
from the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. To make the situation worse, it caused a short terms but
complete close down of the commercial aviation system in the United State.

Research Hypothesis
The literature review looks at how some of the accident and the impact it can have on the aviation industry
and the tourism sectors. As a result of this accidents and incidents, travellers will have second thoughts
before travelling by air if there is an alternative way in getting to their destination.
Despite air travel being consider as one of the safest transportation in travelling. There had been numerous
air accidents in recent years, does this indicate that air travel safety has declined over the years?
The research hypothesis would be then how does the impact of air incident affect the decision of a traveller
in choosing their mode of transportation?
Research purpose and audience
The objective of this research is to understand and explore the impact on how air safety can have on the
relevant industries such as tourism and aviation.
The research audience would be the unit coordinator of MCC213 Communication Research, Melissa
Merchant from Murdoch University; secondly the lecturer of MCC213 Communication Research, Mei Sin
Yeow from Kaplan Singapore; lastly, tour agencies and the airline industry.

References
Capafns, Juan I., Carmen D. Sosa, and Conrado M. Via. "A reattributional training program as a
therapeutic strategy for fear of flying." Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry 30, no. 4
(1999): 259-272.
Carlsson, F., O. Johansson-Stenman, and P. Martinsson. (2004). Is Transport Safety More Valuable in the
Air? The Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 28 (2): 147-63.
Castillo-Manzano, Jos I., Diego J. Pedregal, and Rafael Pozo-Barajas. "Assessing Fear of Flying after a
Plane Crash. The Rainman Effect Myth or Reality?" Journal of Air Transport Management 20 (2012):
20-22. doi:doi:10.1016/j.jairtraman.2011.10.006.
Fleischer, Aliza, Anat Tchetchik, and Tomer Toledo. "The Impact of Fear of Flying on Travelers Flight
Choice Choice Model with Latent Variables." Journal of Travel Research 51, no. 5 (2012): 653-663.
"Germanwings Plane 4U 9525 Crashes in French Alps - No Survivors - BBC News." BBC News. March 24,
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