Managing air safety can be challenging at a time of rapidly changing regulatory requirements and forecast growth in traffic. To that can be added even stricter environmental standards and a goal of increasing safety tenfold.
All these considerations mean that Sweden’s Air Navigation Service (LFV) definitely needs the right tools to manage and assess risks. Swedish airspace currently experiences 650 000 commercial flight movements annually. In addition come military aviation activities, which do not appear in annual flight statistics, but are still significant for LFV’s safety responsibilities.
Air traffic over Sweden is expected to expand threefold, while air safety goals determined by the EU’s SESAR project represents a significant tightening in standards.
“Incident reporting is mandatory in this business,” says Greger Filipsson HSE Coordinator at LFV. “We have to report all events to the Swedish authorities within 72 hours. This is an important tool, which can help us to uncover the causes of a problem and propose measures to improve safety.”
With more planes both on the runway and in the air, proactive risk management is absolutely essential. Incident reporting is used to improve safety in many industries and is perceived to be a successful tool for reducing future risks.
According to Filipsson, such reporting became mandatory after the airport disaster on the Spanish island of Tenerife in 1977, which still ranks as the worst fatal accident in aviation history with 583 fatalities.
“The event, which involved the collision of two Boeing 747 passenger aircraft on the runway, had a big impact on the industry, particularly where communication and incident reporting are concerned,” explains Filipsson.
The word ‘takeoff’ was taken out of general use by air traffic controllers, and confined to clearing an aircraft to lift from the runway. Another consequence was changes to international airline regulation and the start of reporting not only accidents, but also incidents, near misses and potential collisions.
A successful incident reporting system can be used to pick up failures, which might eventually lead to more serious incidents if left undetected. Findings can be collected and analysed in order to identify trends, and they can be shared across national borders.
“Using a risk management tool in everyday work also enhances the general awareness of personnel about the potential for failure, as well as giving us a systematic tool to follow up and make changes,” adds Filipsson. “That minimises risk.”
LFV has approximately 4000 reported incidents annually. A hundred of these are minimum separation infringements, which means that planes are flying closer to each other in the airspace than permitted by the regulations.
Given that flight movements total of around 900 000 annually, Filipsson does not regard the figure as high. But a safety organisation must always strive towards a goal of zero incidents.
“The Synergi risk management system enables us to be proactive in handling and minimising risk,” he says. “The who, what and why are identified and we can implement measures to mitigate future risk.”
“Management can easily get reports based on defined key performance indicators (KPIs) and the system communicates directly with the authorities, which is a huge advantage. We are well placed to take on future aviation challenges.”
Author: Lene Rustad
Photo: Nana Reimers, SAS
