James Norman, PhD

Dr. James Norman is a pilot for a US airline, flying the Airbus 330. In addition to line pilot duties, he works on behalf of his pilot association, teaching risk management, safety management systems, and safety leadership.

James completed a Ph.D. in Aerospace Sciences from the University of North Dakota. His research focused on voluntary reporting (ASAP) and the factors that both promote and discourage frontline employees in choosing to report. His current research focuses on Safety-II, which recognizes human deviation as an essential component of complex systems. He cites Drs. Erik Hollnagel and Sidney Dekker as mentors along the journey towards promoting the “new view” of safety.

James is a three-time recipient of his airline’s Award for Excellence, a NASA Space Grant Consortium recipient, and the 2022 Mosby Award winner (given by industry aircraft dispatchers for contributions, presentations and support in the field of aviation safety). He is a FOQA gatekeeper, and has served two terms as Vice Chairman of his Association’s Safety Council, where he supported a successful effort to begin data fusion across the aviation industry. He also served eight years as the Safety Committee Chairman for Endeavor Air, including duties as a party coordinator for three NTSB investigations.

He is active with a number of international organizations, including the Flight Safety Foundation, Royal Aeronautical Society, Resilience Engineering Association, and EUROCONTROL. He is a reviewer for the three academic journals and conference proceedings.

In 2024, he co-authored “Dark Knights: Exploring resilience and hidden workarounds in commercial aviation through mixed methods” in the journal of Safety Science.  In 2025, he will publish two papers focusing on recent near misses at JFK and AUS, utilizing natural language processing and the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) to reveal patterns, resilience factors, and hidden relationships in the data sets.