Julian Moxon/TOULOUSE
European air traffic management (ATM) officials are calling for a confidential Europe-wide airline ATM incident reporting system to address potential safety shortfalls as air traffic in the region continues to grow.
At a colloquium on ATM safety in Toulouse on 22 November, the leader of the European Commission's (EC's) single sky ATM programme, Bernard Van Houtte, said: "National service providers have not taken into account adequately the need for a harmonised incident reporting system." A high level EC report on ATM, due to be presented to the European Council early next year, "will stress the need to define safety procedures and set up a programme to regulate safety management", Van Houtte adds.
A safety performance review, carried out by the European Civil Aviation Conference in early 1999, found there was a "fragmented and apparently partial approach" to the reporting and analysis of ATM-related safety incidents.
Director of the International Air Transport Association's infrastructure group Phil Hogg says: "The safety situation today looks fine, but we don't know what may be lurking below the surface. We must understand the real risks and have proper incident reporting."
Phil Griffiths, who will become the chairman of Eurocontrol's European Safety Regulation Commission (SRC) on 1 January, points to "encouraging signs" of a co-operative approach to ATM incident reporting, but he says further harmonisation is "essential at a time when significant operational, technical and institutional changes to the European ATM system are being contemplated".
There is much emphasis being placed on the new Eurocontrol Safety Regulation Requirements (ESARRs), which the EC sees as a possible route to safety regulation in the planned European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). Doubts persist, however, as to whether EASA, which will initially be concerned only with aircraft certification and operation, will be given power over ATM safety regulation. "It would be a tragedy if it was not," says Griffiths.
Three out of an initial seven ESARRs have been issued since November 1999, on occurrence reporting and investigation in ATM, safety management systems and personnel. All have been adopted by Eurocontrol's Provisional Council, which, under the agency's yet to be ratified revised convention, gives them legal power in Eurocontrol member states.
Joint Aviation Authorities chief executive Klaus Koplin says that currently "almost all data on ATM-related incidents is lost forever". He cites runway incursions and ground proximity warning system incidents as being cases in which "it has been difficult to draw conclusions because the scope of national reporting systems is too limited." He adds: "In order to trust safety data we need better visibility so that we can learn from past experience. But that must take place in a non-punitive environment."
Source: Flight International
