Flight Safety Foundation estimate of annual expenses more than doubles when bill for personal injuries is included

Ramp damage is costing airlines and corporate aviation nearly twice as much as early estimates suggested – nearly $10 billion a year – Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) “data mining” has revealed.

The reason, says the FSF’s Ground Accident Prevention (GAP) programme analyst, Dr Earl Weener, is that personal injury costs had been “right off the radar” for the airlines, but have now been estimated for the first time at $4.4 billion in addition to the $5 billion cost of aircraft damage repair, downtime and delay.

Now well into Phase 1 of the three-phase FSF/International Air Transport Association (IATA) GAP programme, Weener has found, using data from the airlines, that early estimates of $5 billion costs of ramp damage are turning out to have been valid.

Weener and the FSF’s GAP programme head, Bob Vandel, told last week’s FSF/IATA/International Federation of Airworthiness safety seminar in Moscow that aircraft ramp damage costs are reckoned to be $4 billion, and corporate aircraft costs about $1 billion, but personal injury direct and indirect costs amount to about $4.4 billion.

Airline ramp damage occurs about once every 1,000 flights, but personal injury on the ramp takes place about once every 100 flights, says Weener, driving the direct and indirect costs even higher. The average aircraft downtime involved is 3.5 days and the mean downtime cost is $225,000 per aircraft. For larger airlines, this is the equivalent of having one aircraft in the hangar all year, he points out.

GAP Phase 1 involves using a data collection tool – basically a spreadsheet that airlines can use to analyse their own ramp accident details – and reporting the data to the FSF ramp accident database for central analysis.

In July 2006 the FSF and IATA will meet stakeholders from all parts of the industry in Los Angeles to examine the emerging data, says Vandel.

They will then set up small task forces and focus groups that will decide on the action plan for GAP phase 2, in which they will target the “easy, highest payback” actions that airlines and airports can take to reduce accidents and their huge costs.

DAVID LEARMOUNT/MOSCOW

Ramp accidents are on the wane for the first time, having reached a peak two years ago, says International Air Transport Association (IATA) senior vice-president safety, operations and infrastructure Guenther Matschnigg.

The association’s director operations and infrastructure, David Mawdsley, says this conclusion was drawn from the 50 airlines taking part in IATA’s safety trend analysis and data-exchange system, which pools and analyses pilot reports.

The number of ramp accident reports fell steadily during 2004 and 2005, says Mawdsley. Although it is not yet clear whether this is a worldwide trend, Mawdsley thinks it results from greater awareness of the issue created by FSF/IATA campaigning in recent years.

At the request of numerous airlines, IATA began to carry out ramp safety examinations last May and has completed seven so far, says Mawdsley. These will proceed at the rate of about one a month, but a ramp audit process is still being developed, he adds.

Source: Flight International

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