Airborne law enforcement crewmembers are subject to the same human factors issues as their civilian counterparts and although the civilian sector has been heavily studied, few studies have explored the airborne law enforcement community. This study attempted to fill in some of the gaps in the research by studying the flight management attitudes of 116 airborne law enforcement crewmembers within the United States. 

The study found that there were statistically significant differences in the attitudes of crewmembers based on the number of years they had worked in airborne law enforcement. Overall, crewmembers exhibited positive flight management attitudes. However, relative to each other, crewmembers with 16 – 20 years experience were the most positive, crewmembers with 6 – 10 years experience were the least positive, with the other experience groups falling somewhere in between. 

Because attitudes serve as guides to behavior and behavior directly affects safety, this study infers that there are differences in safety based on the number of years a crewmember has worked in airborne law enforcement.

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