While aviation fatalities have thankfully fallen dramatically in recent years, the phenomena of complexity and cognitive bias have been shown to be factors in many accidents. An understanding of these phenomena promises to bring the fatality rate even lower, and a deeper understanding of commercial aircraft in the context of systems engineering will contribute to that trend.


Systems Approach to the Design of Commercial Aircraft describes commercial aircraft from an advanced systems point of view, addressing complexity, cybersecurity, and systems architecting. In addition, it provides an explanation of systems engineering, describes how systems engineering forms a framework for commercial aircraft, covers how systems engineering and systems architecting relate to commercial aircraft, addresses complexity, and shows how humans fit into systems engineering and the importance for commercial aircraft. It goes onto present how cybersecurity plays an important role in the mix and how human interface fits in.


The readership includes designers of aircraft, manufacturers, researchers, systems engineers, and students.


Scott Jackson is a fellow of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and the author of Systems Engineering for Commercial Aircraft (1997 and 2015) in English and Chinese.


Ricardo Moraes dos Santos is a senior systems engineer at EMBRAER S/A and an INCOSE Brazil chapter director. He works with Architecting process (Corporate) and is head of Cybersecurity and Safety (STPA Applications) at EMBRAER S/A.