**4. Conclusions**

An ameliorating feature of learning from incidents is the potential to e ffect sustainable improvements in aviation safety. A review of safety from the perspective of maintenance and continuing airworthiness sta ff is key to understanding the relationship between safety and the concept of learning from incidents [31]. From the study's qualitative data, we were able to identify how learning occurs in the airworthiness segment, and issues that support and constrain learning. Recurrent mandated training initiatives such as continuation training were found to be pivotal in enabling learning. Aspects such as prevailing culture and poor event causation were noted to have a negative impact on learning. Our proposed incident learning process (Figure 2) o ffers a panoramic of where potential learning opportunities and procedural improvements can arise within the lifecycle of an incident. This perspective could be applied in support of developing regulatory working group specifications and validating continuation training initiatives. In addition, it could also be used to develop a holistic review approach to learning from incidents within other organizations both in the aviation industry and outside. Two notable limitations to our research arise. First, the scarcity of prior studies capable of supporting the basis for the research was pronounced.

However, prior studies in parallel domains were successfully leveraged in support of the literature review. Second, the study's population (n = 34) was relatively small. As the study participants were representative of all a ffected domain functions and a point of saturation was reached, it was deemed adequate.

This research is capable of supporting other papers on additional benefits associated with learning from incidents (LFI). Notably, with the imminent implementation of a safety managemen<sup>t</sup> (SMS) requirement for continuing airworthiness organizations, potential improvements to hazard identification arising from learning from incidents (LFI) could be highlighted.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, J.C. and K.I.K.; methodology, J.C.; formal analysis, J.C.; investigation, J.C.; validation, J.C and K.I.K.; data curation, J.C.; writing—original draft preparation, J.C. and K.I.K.; writing—review and editing, J.C. and K.I.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** The study was conducted according to the Institutional guidelines and approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee of University of Limerick (Research Ethics Approval Number: 2015\_12\_06) dated 6 December 2015.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
