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From page 47... ... 47 Part of the committee's Statement of Task calls on it to: Review data and analyses of all relevant sources of information, such as operational data being used by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the air transport industry to monitor for potential safety concerns; government and industry voluntary aviation safety reporting systems; FAA's annual safety culture assessment; and other sources the committee deems appropriate, including National Transportation Safety Board acci dent investigations; FAA investigations of accidents and incidents; air carrier incidents and safety indicators; and international investigations of accidents and incidents, including information from foreign authorities and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Read the entire page →
From page 48... ... 48 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 in greater depth how data can and should be further used to search for emerging safety trends and examine data sources and analysis processes in use in other countries and by international aviation safety organizations. DATA TYPES AND SOURCES In this section we describe some of the most important sources and types of data supporting analysis of emerging trends in aviation safety for the immediate, intermediate, and future time frames. Read the entire page →
From page 49... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 49 subsequently been developed in aviation.1 ASRS has been in place for more than 45 years and receives about 100,000 reports annually from pilots, air traffic controllers, cabin crew, dispatchers, maintenance technicians, unmanned aviation system operators, and others. ASRS has an additional degree of protection not available in other VSRPs: individuals who report concerning incidents and accidents cannot be punished for the event based on information gathered from other sources (unless their behavior was criminal) Read the entire page →
From page 50... ... 50 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 how frequent or widespread the issues are.3 Furthermore, reports may be lacking in detail and presented from the reporter's limited perspective. They can, however, be used as indicators of emerging trends and for the analysis of potential contributing factors. Read the entire page →
From page 51... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 51 procedures. Air carriers establish parameters within which flights are expected to remain for such items as the stability of approaches, take-off rotation rate, flap position in different flight phases, speed of approach at landing, and hardness of landings (Walker, 2017) Read the entire page →
From page 52... ... 52 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 (TEM) .4,5 LOSA was initially developed in a collaboration between an individual airline and university researchers in the mid-1990s and has since spread worldwide to many commercial carriers. Read the entire page →
From page 53... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 53 Maintenance Maintenance errors contribute to 4–5% of accidents and incidents, but acci dents involving maintenance are 6.5 times more likely to involve a fatality and maintenance-involved fatal accidents result in 3.6 times more fatalities than other fatal accidents (Marias and Robichaud, 2012) Read the entire page →
From page 54... ... 54 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 Incidents There are a variety of incident data reviewed in this section based on data sources investigated to date. NTSB Accident Reports NTSB prepares reports for all civil aviation accidents involving a U.S. Read the entire page →
From page 55... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 55 risks. These Preliminary ARIA Reports are reviewed by designated quality assurance (QA) Read the entire page →
From page 56... ... 56 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 with prescriptive FAA regulations regarding work hours and rest periods (FAA, 2013) Read the entire page →
From page 57... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 57 carriers to analyze and monitor many of the same data described in the section above. SMSs include well-defined safety goals and metrics and means of measuring performance. Read the entire page →
From page 58... ... 58 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 Other Potential Data Sources Topics and data sources that the committee has not yet reviewed that were suggested by congressional staff include • The rigor of the certifications done through the organizational desig nation authority process, whereby employees of the applicant are delegated by FAA with key roles in decision making and reporting safety concerns to FAA; • Indicators of airport safety monitoring and management; • Manufacturing quality control/quality assurance processes; • Indicators of training competence; and • Tracking of airworthiness directives and other updates to initial certification decisions, to analyze for trends in where certification decisions have later been found to have gaps. Other data sources are also available, such as the flight track of the aircraft and neighboring aircraft and weather. Read the entire page →
From page 59... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 59 automated flight deck systems,15 training pilots to protect against loss-of-control (LOC) events,16 and tracking design assumptions through the certification process and then following up once a system is certificated to confirm the certification rationale reflects actual behavior in the field.17 o Some analyses focus on broad issues within one organization. Read the entire page →
From page 60... ... 60 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 pilot or controller associations) , and researchers from other government agencies (e.g., NASA) Read the entire page →
From page 61... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 61 the analyses they will be used for, and the type of results and outputs of the analyses (and their dissemination) , are generally considered important factors in decisions by air carriers, labor associations, and other parties to voluntarily contribute data that they otherwise might not share -- indeed, that they otherwise might not even collect. Read the entire page →
From page 62... ... 62 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 TABLE 4-1 Examples of Precursor Data Sources Data Type Included in ASIAS Not in ASIAS Public Not Public Voluntary Safety Reports ASRS ASAP, ATSAP Not all companies include ASAP details that others share with ASIAS on event types and contributing factors. Flight Operational Data Advisory Directives FAA-Approved FOQA Programs Not all companies share all FOQA data they collect (e.g., gatekeeper comments) Read the entire page →
From page 63... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 63 of data analysis tools at hand, and fairly specific constraints with pragmatic and policy concerns with which data sets are available and with difficulties in their aggregation and integration. The next sections briefly review the categories of analysis processes suitable for different types of analysis. Read the entire page →
From page 64... ... 64 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 perspective to look for significantly different concerns in the future beyond those they are knowledgeable about. Methods to discover previously unknown patterns from massive data sets have been developed and applied to aviation data for the purposes of revealing atypical flights (Gariel et al., 2011) Read the entire page →
From page 65... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 65 Development Center that also performs much of the ASIAS data analysis, describing a structured approach for examining the general phenomenon of LOC accidents, which is attributed to the most commercial aviation accidents worldwide in the past 20 years (The MITRE Corporation, 2021) Read the entire page →
From page 66... ... 66 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 characterization of precursor measures of hazards, and the need for improved analysis processes to assess them. Monitoring Exceedances and Lagging Indicators An immediate method for analyzing aviation safety data is to monitor operational data for "exceedances" (i.e., instances where data fall outside specific limits specified for each data stream [e.g., airspeed higher or lower than some criteria] Read the entire page →
From page 67... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 67 CAST and ASIAS CAST and ASIAS have unique roles with their charter to examine systemwide safety. While many of the efforts described earlier involve significant collaboration in purpose of specific analyses, CAST and ASIAS seek to extend the collaboration across the entire commercial aviation industry. Read the entire page →
From page 68... ... 68 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 More specific background on CAST and ASIAS is provided in the next two sections. CAST CAST is an outgrowth of two major commission reports from 1997 that addressed concerns that the commercial aviation fatality rate had leveled off after decades of steady decline.19,20 With demand for air travel accelerating, the implication of this leveling off was that the frequency of fatal accidents would result in unacceptable increases in fatalities as demand for air travel increased. Read the entire page →
From page 69... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 69 Once a hazard has been determined by CAST as requiring mitigation, it develops SEs. A considerable additional benefit of the CAST collaboration is the buy-in generated by the extensive consultative decision process for developing the recommended SEs. Read the entire page →
From page 70... ... 70 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 intended and unintended consequences. There is overlap between the various teams that each creates for their analyses, with many personnel serving on both CAST and ASIAS teams. Read the entire page →
From page 71... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 71 Furthermore, earlier discussion noted MITRE studies using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning technologies that support analysis processes capable of identifying precursor measures that better correlate with, and are able to predict, hazardous states. Read the entire page →
From page 72... ... 72 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 adoption of SMSs and FAA's oversight of them have not yet fully matured across carriers and FAA field offices since the mandated introduction of SMSs in 2015. Intermediate- and future-time-frame analyses of safety would likewise benefit from understanding the practices and safety culture in the design, certification, and operational approval functions within the industry. Read the entire page →
From page 73... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 73 and importance of the proprietary information shared by private industry. These public–private collaborations have undoubtedly contributed to the considerable improvements in commercial aviation safety since their inception. Read the entire page →
From page 74... ... 74 EMERGING HAZARDS IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION -- REPORT 1 Whereas the CAST/ASIAS collaboration has a valuable role in immediate safety management, particularly in collaboratively developing mitigations for known hazards, it may not be the best forum for application of tools and methods for future-time-frame analyses of hazards that are not yet known (and indeed may not manifest until proposed changes are implemented) Read the entire page →
From page 75... ... IDENTIFYING EMERGING TRENDS 75 The MITRE Corporation. Read the entire page →

From page 47...

... 47 Part of the committee's Statement of Task calls on it to: Review data and analyses of all relevant sources of information, such as operational data being used by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the air transport industry to monitor for potential safety concerns; government and industry voluntary aviation safety reporting systems; FAA's annual safety culture assessment; and other sources the committee deems appropriate, including National Transportation Safety Board acci dent investigations; FAA investigations of accidents and incidents; air carrier incidents and safety indicators; and international investigations of accidents and incidents, including information from foreign authorities and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)