Global pressures will force airlines to improve
David Learmount/LONDON
During 1999, new global forces for aviation safety kicked in for the first time in the form of sanctions. Where carrots failed, the stick was applied, and Korean Air felt the effect. Powerful global safety forces have recently come into play, which include:
• International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) safety audits;
• the US International Aviation Safety Assessment programme and other regional safety policing policies;
• the new practice of peer carriers vetting airlines for safety performance before they join an alliance or even a codeshare;
• the growing penalty that airlines pay for having an accident in terms of unfavourable worldwide media exposure.
Meanwhile, safety is becoming progressively more data driven as the digital means for airline flight operations analysis rapidly becomes easier to implement.
The only escape from data is not to collect it. But, gradually, airlines that do not collect data and analyse their operational performance, using some form of flight operations quality assurance (FOQA), will become the exception. While regulators are unlikely to make FOQA mandatory, it is only a matter of time before running an effective FOQA programme becomes a condition for entering an airline alliance or codeshare. Commercial pressures to improve safety are ultimately the most effective, because they cross borders and cultures. A FOQA programme works properly only if the airline sees its benefits in terms of lower risks and potential cost savings. Otherwise the equipment is procured, the data is collected, but then it is ignored.
There are alternatives to imposing regionally what is basically a US - or at least Western-led - safety solution. All nations or world regions, but especially those seen to be lagging in safety terms, are encouraged by ICAO and the International Air Transport Association to develop regional safety improvement forums, through which safety priorities specific to the region can be developed. Most areas now have them, with the notable exception of the Asia Pacific/ Indonesia region and sub-Saharan Africa.
Korean Air's recent experience has been the most dramatic example of what happens if an airline consistently falls below acceptable standards. Its downfall and the airline's recovery effort, regardless of its success or failure, will be likely to serve not only as a cautionary tale but also as a catalyst for future solutions. After a string of serious accidents and costly incidents over the last five years, Korean has been safety audited by Delta, had its codeshare with Delta cancelled, and has set up a new, five-year, Flight Safety-Boeing-run programme for retraining its pilots and revising its operational practices.
North America has its safety priorities determined by its Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST). The acronyms are different but the purpose is the same for Latin America's PAAST, Europe's JSSI, and others. Practical measures to eliminate controlled flight into terrain heads the priorities list for them all, and the lists have much in common, but local experience, terrain, weather and infrastructure dictate and validate regional variations.
In future policy terms, CAST stresses the need to "focus on prevention". FOQA is a favoured tool, but cannot be the only one in a programme which lists runway incursions and engine mechanical failures among the priority targets for elimination. Meanwhile, the JSSI has proposed an analysis of "future hazards", a highly academic study which could go off the rails if it becomes too "metaphysical", warns Klaus Koplin, who heads the Joint Aviation Authorities. The task's difficulty is made clear in the first principle of the proposed study: "Future hazards may include not yet identified existing hazards."
Koplin, however, wraps up the principles in a definition: "Future hazards are the consequences of past or future changes that might lead to a significant number of accidents or fatalities." If the "significant number" sounds chilling, the intent is not to put too much constraint on changes because of the benefit they may bring. Aviation's history provides evidence that, whatever the benefits of technological advances, the safety graph dips - or at least wavers - while industry learns how to use the new tools.
With the industry soon to adopt the wide-spread primary use of global navigation satellite systems, new communications and navigation and surveillance/air traffic management system in progressively more congested skies, plenty of work lies ahead for aviation safety teams seeking global and regional solutions for the resulting challenges.
The intent is to grapple with the unknown and win: to determine a methodology for predicting, more accurately than has before, the kind of problems which new technology or new operational practices may bring.
Source: Flight International
