A non-traditional look at safety

Citation

(2001), "A non-traditional look at safety", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 73 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2001.12773eac.007

A non-traditional look at safety

A non-traditional look at safety

The US FAA Small Airplane Directorate liaises with manufacturers and the GA community to raise the level of safety. Several years ago the SAD completed an in-depth review if 16,200 GA accidents covering a six-year time frame, clearly showing that the best way to reduce fatal accidents is to reduce pilot workload. Typically, it takes a significant level of proficiency to fly a simple, light aeroplane in moderate to hard instrument meteorological condition (IMC). Contrast this to the modern autoflight systems available on business and commercial aircraft.

The FAA has developed new processes that will allow it to serve the industry and owner/pilot customers better. The FAA vision is of a credible and concise product certification process that results in: timely … and efficient product type design and production approvals; clearly defined and understood roles, responsibilities, and accountability of all stakeholders; timely identification and resolution of the certification basis, potential safety issues, and business practice requirements; and optimal delegation using safety management concepts with appropriate controls and oversight. A number of projects have been started, including "type clubs" as an information source.

Examples of how the FAA is approaching its goal of accident reduction include the Safer Skies initiative; safety assessment documents; Cockpit Flight Deck Design (GAMA Publication No. 10) and CAPSTONE. The last-named is the Alaskan region's accelerated effort to improve aviation safety and efficiency through installation of government-furnished Global Positioning System (GPS) based avionics and data link communications suites in most commercial aircraft serving the Yukon-Kuskokwin delta area. The CAPSTONE program will enable delivery of improved weather products to the pilot and test the GPS and data link technology as "proof of concept" for the operational enhancements requested.

Other concerns are ageing aircraft, and the FAA is becoming more concerned and sensitive to continued airworthiness problems with systems structural integrity. As far as crashworthiness is concerned, computer modelling has revolutionized the ability to design some level of crashworthiness into the airframe. Synthetic vision is another fast-growing activity and it is believed that this facility will be available for GA within the next two years using GPS and a high resolution database.