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Most military aviation organisations today have not evolved their safety management approach towards harmonising with civil aviation. Safety culture is the base for any civil aviation organisation, enabling employees to communicate effectively and be fully aware and extrovert on safety. Just culture and reporting culture both are related to safety culture. Both are parts of the awareness process, enhancing safety promotion. These distinct elements and the safety management systems (SMS) can serve well the military aviation. This paper aims to present and discuss the SMS philosophy, structure and elements as a solution for military aviation organisations.

The feature of civil aviation SMSs are presented and discussed, with reference to the applicable frameworks and regulations governing the SMS operation. A discussion on the challenges faced within the military aviation organisations, with a brief examination of a European Union military aviation organisation, is presented.

The European Military Airworthiness Requirements, which are based on the European Aviation Safety Agency set of rules, can act the basis for establishing military aviation SMSs. A civil-based approach, blended, as necessary, with military culture is workable, as this is the case for many defence forces that have adopted such aviation safety systems.

This viewpoint paper discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with the adoption of SMS by military aviation organisations. This is the first time that this issue is openly discussed and presented to the wider aviation community, outside military aviation.

European air transport policy, emerged through the confluence of case law and legislation, in four broad areas: liberalization, safety and security, greening, and the external policy. Following the implementation of the single market for air transport, policy shifted to liberalizing and regulating associated services and in recent years to greening, the external aviation policy, and safety and security. Inclusion of air transport in the Environmental Trading Scheme of the European Union exemplifies the European Commission’s proactive stand on bringing the industry in line with emission reduction trajectories of other industries. However, the bid to include flights to third countries in the trading scheme pushed the EU into a controversial position, causing the Commission to halt implementation and to give ICAO time to seek a global multilateral agreement. The chapter also discusses how the nationality clauses in air services agreements breached the Treaty of Rome, and a court ruling to that effect enabled the EC to extend EU liberalization policies beyond the European Union, resulting in the Common Aviation Area with EU fringe countries and the Open Aviation Area with the USA. Another important area of progress was aviation safety, where the EU region is unsurpassed in the world, yet the Commission has pushed the boundary even further, by establishing the European Safety Agency to oversee the European Aviation Safety Management System. Another important area of regulatory development was aviation security, a major focus after the woeful events in 2001, but increasingly under industry scrutiny on costs and effectiveness. The chapter concludes by arguing that in the coming decade, the EU will strive to strengthen its position as a global countervailing power, symbolized in air transport by a leadership position in environmental policy and international market liberalization, exemplified in the EU’s external aviation policy.

Airline business management is set on airworthy strategy. Airline sustainability depends upon corporate-based airworthy strategy as airworthiness is the base to any airline business management and strategy. An airline can ensize its corporate sustainability if it has airworthiness strategy and risk management. The main condition to survive in the airline business is to maintain airworthiness with the fleet, maintenance and corporate-risk management. Aircraft maintenance technician (AMT) has a dual role in aircraft maintenance system as the source of failure in maintenance process via his volatility and unmanageable qualifications and secondly source of manager of maintain airworthiness of the aircrafts in airline. Situational awareness of managers about both limitations and qualifications of human factors is vital determinant to the decision-making process in aviation. Although continuously improving in related literature, one of the biggest weaknesses of the current methods of AMT error or performance is that the ability to model the reciprocal effects of the factors affecting the fault is limited. For this reason, this study aims to develop an analytic network process (ANP) model that takes into account the effects of mutual dependences among factors.

Firstly, with the help of experts and extensive literature, 67 factors that contributed to AMT error are identified and grouped. Then, the factors identified as eligible criteria and sub-criteria that contributed to the AMT errors are determined. In this study, the weights of identified criteria that have influence on AMT error try to determine by using ANP method. ANP is the common method to solve multi-criteria decision-making problems and is used to calculate priorities of factors. Criteria determined in this study are classified into three main clusters: “individual-related criteria”, “working environment-related criteria” and “organisational-related criteria”. These main clusters include 15 sub criteria such as communication, documentation (quality/updating/availability) and peer pressure.

The result of this study shows that time pressure, organisational culture, safety culture and supervision are the most important criteria that contributed to AMT error. Their weights are 0.207, 0.172, 0.102 and 0.094, respectively.

There are many difficulties and limitations in measuring the factors that have an influence on AMT errors. For this reason, the weights of criteria and sub-criteria necessary are determined using ANP, and in this manner, it is possible to make better decisions in this process as ANP is a multi-criteria decision-making technique that considers qualitative factors in decision-making problems. The factors’ taxonomy determined as a result of the expert opinions and the extensive literature and the ANP model developed taking into account the dependencies between the factors will contribute to the literature.

Europe has adopted Flight Path 2050 (FP 2050) challenge with an objective of 90 per cent of the travelers being able to reach door-to-door European destinations within 4 hours by 2050. The aim can be achieved by reliable, well-organized small aircraft transport (SAT). Analysis of the currently operating small aircraft operational reliability data will support the development of future aircraft designs as well as reliability and safety requirements necessary for commercial operations.

The paper provides results of a statistical analysis of small aircraft current operations based on the reported events contained in the Database named European Coordination Centre for Aviation Incident Reporting Systems database. It presents identified safety indicators and focuses particularly on those related to the aviation technology.

It has been found that certain airframe and powerplant systems have the biggest influence on flight safety.

Multidisciplinary analysis of the operational and aircraft components reliability data will help in a proper preparation of the SAT supporting facilities, a design process of new aircraft and improvements of the existing airframe and powerplant systems.

Presented results are valuable for further developments of the statistical tools facilitating new product introduction.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an optimal model of an integrated quality and safety management system (QSMS).

Keywords related with these systems were identified from international standards and subsequently mined from a selection of peer reviewed articles that discuss and propose varying forms of integrated models for both systems. Cluster analysis was used to establish the degree to which integrated models, as described in the articles were quality dominant vs safety dominant. Word counts were utilized for establishing content and attributes for each category. An optimal integrated model was developed from the final cluster analysis and substantiated by a one-way analysis of variance. Experts from industry were consulted to validate and fine-tune the model.

It was determined that characteristics of an optimal integrated model include the keywords “risk,” “safety,” “incident,” “injury,” “hazards,” as well as “preventive action,” “corrective action,” “rework,” “repair,” and “scrap.” It also combines elements of quality function deployment as well as hazard and operability analysis meshed into a plan-do-check-act type work-flow.

Given the vast array of clustering algorithms available, the clusters that resulted were dependent upon the algorithm deployed and may differ from clusters resulting for divergent algorithms.

The optimized model is a hybrid that consists of a quality management system as the superordinate strategic element with safety management system deployed as the supporting tactical element. The model was implemented as a case study, and resulted in 13 percent labor-hour saving.

This research has the potential to contribute to the understanding of the sustainable ground handling operations framework. Ramp operations as the main system of ground handling include critical services for aircraft/airlines. The purpose of this study is to identify the risk factors in ramp operations for all related stakeholders’ awareness to enhance flight safety. Classifying risk factors, the four main performance fields under risk taxonomy is determined. Thus, managers may allocate resources effectively to handle related threats for corporate sustainability.

New taxonomy with human performance value indicators, which sources from the environment is developed. New developed taxonomy is entitled as “environmental value approach,” which represents environmental value-based approach. The developed new risk factors taxonomy is divided into groups such as ramp personnel, organizational, sustainability-based risk factors: triple view and ergonomics obtained from an extensive literature review and experts’ opinions in the field of human performance.

The findings of this research show that managers need a risk management-oriented approach to manage the human factor affecting performance and sustainability. The newly developed taxonomy offers not only identifying the sources of unsafe operational risk factors but also using as a decision-support tool to manage risks for achieving their sustainability goals. When managerial decisions are made according to risk taxonomy and managing these risks, then corporate performance and individual performance may improve.

The new taxonomy presents the performance-based management of the human factor with a holistic and systematic risk management-based approach. There is no risk taxonomy study designed considering ramp operations and sustainability-based human factor performance.

The purpose of this paper is to improve risk assessment processes in airline flight operations by introducing a dynamic risk assessment method.

Fuzzy logic and Bayesian network are used together to form a dynamic structure in the analysis. One of the most challenging factors of the analyses in aviation is to get quantitative data. In this study, the fuzzy data quantification technique is used to perform dynamic risk assessment. Dynamic structure in the analysis is obtained by transforming the bow-tie model into a Bayesian network equivalent.

In this study, the probability of top-event from fault tree analysis is calculated as 1.51 × 10⁻⁶. Effectiveness of the model is measured by comparing the analysis with the safety performance indicator data that reflects past performance of the airlines. If two data are compared with each other, they are at the same order of value, with small difference (0.6 × 10⁻⁷).

This study proposes a dynamic model to be used in risk assessment processes in airline flight operations. A dynamic model for safety analysis provides real-time, autonomous and faster risk assessment. Moreover, it can help in the decision-making process and reduce airline response time to undesired states, which means that the proposed model can contribute to the efficiency of the risk management process in airline flight operations.

Accessibility to entrepreneurial education can be very restrictive because of associated barriers (e.g. add-on course/credit cost and prolonged duration) that prevent students from gaining entry into learning experiences. This study aims to provide an approach to address the gap of inaccessibility. This study proposes the integration of entrepreneurially minded coursework into aviation coursework using information literacy (IL) exercises by incorporating readings, videos, student-centered online discussions and student-facilitated presentations.

Students participated in an intervention consisting of five entrepreneurially minded online discussions where they watched a video or read an article and then responded to a series of questions. Upon completion of the intervention, participants completed a survey related to student learning outcomes and satisfaction.

The results from this study provide insight into changes in student perceptions after engaging in IL exercises designed to develop the entrepreneurial mindset. There is evidence that online discussions, journal article critiques and student-facilitated presentations are effective ways to integrate IL into aviation courses to cultivate entrepreneurial mindsets among students.

Several university-based approaches currently exist to help students develop an entrepreneurial mindset, including majors and minors in entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship coursework and centers for entrepreneurship that offer extracurricular learning experiences. Although these approaches offer a great foundation, they are typically viewed as “extra” with high barriers to entry. The limited focus on integration into coursework (whereby everyone gets an opportunity) prevents equitable access to a larger contingent of students. Therefore, in this study, we propose one approach to integrating the entrepreneurial mindset into coursework.

This study aims to develop an inclusive, multidisciplinary, flexible and organizationally adaptable safety risk management framework, including diversity management, that will be implemented to ensure safety is and remains at the desired level. If the number of incidents and potential incidents that could lead to accidents and their impact rates are to be reduced operationally and administratively, aviation safety risks and sources of risk must be better understood, sources of risk identified, and the safety risk management framework designed in an organization-specific and organization-wide sustainable way. At this point, it is necessary to draw the conceptual framework well and to define the boundaries of the concepts well. In this study, a framework model that can be adapted to the organization is proposed to optimize the management of risks and provide both efficient and effective resource allocation and organizational structure design in its operations and management functions.

The qualitative research method – triple techniques – was deemed appropriate for this study, which aims to identify, examine, interpret and develop the situations of safety management models. In this context, document analysis, business process modeling technique and Delphi techniques from qualitative research methods were used via integration as the methodology of this research.

To manage dynamic civil aviation management activities and business processes effectively and efficiently, the risk management process is the building block of the “Proposed Process Model” that supports the decision-making processes of aviation organizations and managers. This “Framework Conceptual Model” building block also helps build capacity and resilience by enabling continuous development, organizational learning, and flexible structuring.

This research is limited to air transportation and aviation safety management issues. This research is limited specifically to a safety-based risk management framework for the aviation industry. This research may have social implications as source saving, optimum resource use and capacity building will make a contribution to society and add value besides operational and practical implementation.

This research may contribute to more safe operations and functions in the aviation industry.

Management and academia may gain considerable support from this research to manage their safety risks via a corporate-tailored risk management framework, both improving resilience and developing corporate capacity. With this model presented, decision-makers will have a guiding structure that can optimally manage the main risk types that may be encountered in the safety risk in the fields of suppliers, manufacturers, demand changes, logistics, information management, environmental, legal and regulatory. Existing studies in the literature are generally in the form of algorithms and cannot be used as a decision-making support tool. This model aims to fill the gap in the literature. In addition, added value may be created by applying this model to optimum management safety risks in the real aviation industry and its related sectors.