Line Operation Safety Audit (LOSA) for JAL

For three months from April 2007, monitoring personnel from TLC (The LOSA Collaborative), a LOSA operating company, and JAL flight crew who have received training on LOSA, will travel on 435 domestic and international flights as supernumerary crew. They will observe flight crew performance under actual flight conditions. The underlying intent of LOSA is to further decrease human error and improve operational quality through analysis of flight crew duties and the effects of fatigue.

LOSA is a program that was developed in 1990 by the University of Texas with the support of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. It is recommended by the FAA. A contingent objective is to discover trends in handling human errors and factors that trigger human errors within each airline by analyzing and evaluating results of the monitoring. JAL will be expected to implement any necessary corrective actions based on the results of the analyses. The effects of corrective actions will be verified in future through ongoing monitoring and re-evaluation.

By comparison with the IATA Operational Audit, LOSA is a huge undertaking.