Editor’s note:
At La Guardia Airport on March 22, 2026, two pilots were killed, and 43 passengers and crew were injured when the Air Canada plane operated by Jazz Aviation collided with a fire truck upon landing.
Since then, safety experts have cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the causes of the incident until investigators collect evidence for a complete and accurate picture.
“NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy has cautioned against ‘finger pointing’ and speculation as investigators work their way through what happened,” BBC reported.
While we agree not to jump to conclusions, these tragic events are a timely and appropriate pivot from our hazardous attitudes series this week to talk about one of the most pressing issues in modern aviation: task saturation.
Here is more from Alder Airport Operations Manager and AOA Consultant Sam Allen.
Being prepared for the unexpected
Unexpected events are certainly nothing new in aviation or construction. Things such as aircraft incidents/accidents, severe weather, or medical emergencies can rapidly increase workload throughout an airport environment.
Crews must diagnose the problems they have been presented with, execute established procedures, and communicate effectively, often under acute external pressures.
The reality of having established procedures and systems is that overreliance can often cascade the occasional systematic failure.
In the case of airports and aviation, system-wide failures are becoming all-too-common with issues like IT outages, ATC communications and radar problems, or crew scheduling glitches for airlines.
What is task saturation?
Task saturation is a critical issue in aviation that occurs when the demands placed on an individual exceed their cognitive (and potentially physical) capacity to manage them effectively.
Often, human factors can be both a contributor and outcome of task saturation. Fatigue, stress, the FAA-defined hazardous attitudes, and even depression or anger can reduce one’s ability to manage multiple tasks simultaneously.
In high-workload environments, particularly during abnormal situations or emergencies, task saturation can degrade situational awareness, impair decision-making, and increase the likelihood of errors.
Understanding and mitigating task saturation is essential for maintaining safety, especially in the aviation industry.
How does task saturation develop?
Task saturation arises when a person is confronted with more tasks than can be processed within the available time. When task demand exceeds processing and actionable capacity, performance begins to deteriorate.
This often results in “tunnel vision,” where attention narrows to a single task while other critical elements are neglected or forgotten.
What are the causes of task saturation?
High levels of workload are nothing new for construction crews or aviation professionals.
In an airfield construction setting, high workload can come from all aspects of the project – demanding stakeholders, Airport Ops and/or management oversight, or high tempo coordination requirements.
All too often, high workload levels simply come from too many responsibilities being placed on one individual. A notably observed example are flaggers or visual spotters being cross-utilized as one of the construction crew, diverting their attention from their critical duties.
Consequences of task saturation
Task saturation can have serious safety implications occasionally leading to incidents, particularly in the aviation industry. Loss of situational awareness can lead to loss of separation between aircraft and equipment.
Communication breakdowns or errors cause confusion, further fogging the normal clearly defined communication procedures on an airport. Either accelerated or delayed decision-making often leads to unnecessary and uncharacteristic errors which at best lead to inefficiencies, but at worst can result in tragedy.
Numerous aviation incidents and accidents upon being investigated have identified task saturation as a contributing factor or direct cause, often in combination with other human performance limitations.
Mitigation strategies
How do we prevent task saturation from continuing to affect our airports and projects?
Prioritization is a fundamental management skill. Sometimes, for the safety of all involved, we must say no for the sake of keeping people from becoming overwhelmed. Another term for this from the emergency management world could be triage… aligning your capacity and capability to take care of needs in the most efficient order possible.
Sometimes other elements of aviation can learn some lessons from the flight deck.
In task saturation’s case, crew resource management (CRM) techniques could be applied to other elements of the industry. Items such as identifying “pilot flying” vs “pilot monitoring” could be easily applied to management of workload based on the number of managing resources you have for the big picture.
Using all available resources to arrive at a successful outcome is often used as a method to ensure that all avenues of solution have been considered.
Mitigation of the human factor is essential but often is the most difficult consideration to resolve. In the case of our earlier discussed fatigue and stress, we always hear the “part of the job” line and accept it as fact.
Evaluating the cost/benefit of mandatory overtime, long shift assignments, and ending the philosophy that we must always “do the most with the least” should be commonplace strategies for combating task saturation on the individual level.
Continuous awareness is continuous improvement
Task saturation remains a significant challenge in aviation, particularly as airports and the system they support grow more complex.
By understanding this issue, all elements of the industry can work to maintain or regain control, preserve systemwide standards, and enhance overall aviation safety.
Continuous awareness of the issue is essential to ensure that task saturation does not continue to compromise operational safety and efficiency.
Saturation of any kind showcases a lack of capacity. To combat task saturation and its compromising effect on safety, WE must demonstrate our capacity for positive change to get us back on track as an industry.