Dr. James Norman

Independent Researcher

James Norman flies the A-330 for a US airline and holds a Ph.D. in Aerospace Sciences from the University of North Dakota. His Ph.D. research explored voluntary reporting (ASAP), revealing disparate levels of buy-in and trust across frontline groups. His academic interests include Safety-II, resilience engineering, learning from incidents, and data ethics.

James has been recognized several times for his contributions to aviation safety, receiving his airline’s Award for Excellence, a NASA Space Grant Consortium scholarship, and the Mosby Award (given by industry dispatchers). He is a FOQA gatekeeper for his airline and serves as a mentor pilot.

He is involved with the Flight Safety Foundation, the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Resilience Engineering Association (REA), and EUROCONTROL. He is a peer reviewer for CRC Press, Routledge, HindSight Magazine, and the Journal of Aerospace Information Systems. He also served as guest editor for the REA's newsletter.

James recently published "Dark Knights: Exploring Resilience and Hidden Workarounds in Commercial Aviation" in the journal Safety Science. In 2025, he will publish two pieces regarding near misses at JFK and AUS that utilize artificial intelligence and natural language processing to model the incident investigations.