David Learmount/SANTIAGO DE CHILE
Airline alliances are on course to form professional standards councils to ensure that their less safe members meet acceptable performance levels. Prof Graham Hunt, head of the School of Aviation at Massey University, New Zealand, gave the news to delegates at the International Civil Aviation Organisation's (ICAO) Global Flight Safety and Human Factors Symposium at Santiago, Chile, on 12-15 April.
Hunt says that passengers, provided with seamless travel through global alliances, are concerned about safety levels as they buy tickets from an airline they know, but fly with an alliance member airline they have not heard of.
New liability issues suggest a need for safety and human performance standards above the minima accepted under ICAO or national regulatory prescriptions, Hunt says. This may force ICAO to produce guidelines and recommended practices for alliances, he says.
Meanwhile, he suggests that individual groups will create alliance-based professional standards councils with responsibility for establishing and regulating levels of professional competency. Performance criteria would have to meet national aviation authorities' minimum standards and alliance members would have to provide evidence of compliance.
• Jean Paries, head of industrial human factors consultancy Dedale and formerly of the French Bureau d'Enqête Accidents, says global airline industry and infrastructural growth is set to produce accident risks which safety strategies will not be able to cope with. New ways of approaching safety management are needed, he says. Pushing the system based on crew resource and error management too far could produce over optimisation, leading to reduced efficiency and a drop in safety, he says.
Source: Flight International
