It is no longer tolerable for aviation to simply learn from its mistakes after an accident, FAA Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety Nick Sabatini told assembled charter operators at the recent National Air Transportation Association Air Charter Summit. To that end, FAA’s data gathering efforts, which Sabatini warned are under threat, have moved from the forensics of accident investigation to prevention, or prognostics.
“It would be irresponsible and reckless to wait for the next accident to make additional safety enhancements,” said Sabatini. “As safety professionals, we must use every tool — especially the sharpest tools — available to enhance safety. It is entirely fitting that as the regulator, FAA lead and foster new ways of improving safety and that we create the infrastructure that can be used by, and across, the aviation community. That is the role of the regulator in the 21st century. The greater amount of data … and the advanced analysis … will enable us to find emerging threats …and to identify previously undiscovered risks … that could be buried in terabytes of safety information. This gives us an advantage we’ve never had — the ability to act ahead of time to mitigate risks and prevent accidents.”
He pointed to Congressional and FAA critics attempts to short circuit this effort in the wake of surveillance failures at American and Southwest airlines, adding that the FAA’s new data gathering efforts have brought new players to the aviation safety table, allowing government and industry work together to enhance aviation safety.
“We often hear that air carrier accident rates have reached such a low level that we should no longer expect sudden and sustained breakthroughs in future rates,” he said. “I disagree. The aviation community is on the threshold of reaching the next level in aviation safety. At the same time, reaching this threshold is under threat. This is because the keystone to future breakthroughs is continuing to work together with industry to obtain safety data to identify remaining or previously undiscovered risk.”
Sabatini pointed to voluntary safety and reporting programs such as Aviation Safety Action Programs, Flight Operational Quality Assurance Programs, and the Continued Operational Safety Program as the new frontier is furthering safety, despite recent criticism that FAA and operators are too cozy and that relationship has led to lapses in aviation oversight with Southwest and American airlines. Congress and FAA critics have called for tighter surveillance including the elimination of cooperative data gathering efforts. ASAP has grown from that one program at American to 166 ASAP agreements with pilots, mechanics, dispatchers, and flight attendants across 69 airlines, as well as with mechanics at five major repair station organizations.
“How did we get from an annual ratio of one accident for every five pilots … to where, for the past 70 years, aviation safety has improved by a third or more every decade,” Sabatini asked. “How did we get to where — over the past five years — air carrier accidents with on-board fatalities have occurred at a rate of about one in every 15 million passenger flights?”
Sabatini pointed to the FAA’s Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing initiative – ASIAS – which gathers crucial safety information, and, using sophisticated analysis tools, detects trends, assess risks, and prioritize mitigations, sharing the information with the aviation community.
“After the August 2006 accident when an airplane took off from the wrong runway at Lexington, Kentucky, my organization’s newly formed Aviation Safety Analytical Services staff reviewed 5.4 million records from a number of databases,” Sabatini reported. “This examination uncovered 116 wrong runway departures involving commercial air carriers over the previous 20 years. We dug deeper. In a Wrong Runway Study, we found that certain airports had common factors that could be confusing to pilots. For example, runway thresholds that end in a large apron area can be confusing. Other elements that can contribute to crewmember misunderstanding include a short distance between the airport terminal and the runway … or a complex airport design ... or the use of a runway as a taxiway. We used these findings to call the aviation community together for last summer’s FAA Call to Action on Runway Safety. After seeing the findings, members of the community stepped up and made voluntary — not Government-mandated — safety improvements. That is just one example of the power of data — of collecting, analyzing, and sharing it.”
ASIAS participants include the FAA, NASA, The MITRE Corporation, manufacturers, and eight major airlines who provide data from their ASAP Programs and their Flight Operational Quality Assurance, or FOQA, programs. MITRE de-identifies, aggregates, and safeguards the safety data to foster broad participation. Currently, ASIAS includes flight-crew reports. Future plans include the addition of de-identified reports from maintenance and dispatch personnel and from flight attendants as well as reports from FAA air traffic controllers and manufacturer employees.
Sabatini also said that the ASIAS team is pushing the science of advanced data analysis and fostering the development of cutting-edge data analysis tools and pointed to the FOQA results from several airlines. Digital flight data recorders showed warnings from Terrain Awareness Warning Systems (TAWS) at several airports with adjacent mountainous terrain in a sector of Oakland, Calif. airspace.
“Our analysts reviewed multiple data sources to get a clearer and fuller picture of the problem. They analyzed Minimum Vectoring Altitudes (MVAs). They plotted the TAWS alert locations in relationship to these MVAs to reveal a relationship,” he explained. “Next, they overlaid radar track data from arriving flights and, additionally, they overlaid the terrain database combining — or fusing — it with the MVA and TAWS data. With all of this, they were able to ‘see’ a causal relationship that could not be seen from any one data source. The single data point — the five TAWS alerts — is just that … a single piece of information. But, fusing the data sources — including the MVAs, radar track data, and more — provided a larger picture and a more complete understanding of the issues. From those five TAWS alerts in Oakland airspace, thanks to data gathering, sharing, and analysis, we are making flying safer — in the way we design MVAs, in how we vector traffic, in the design of TAWs software, by improving aircraft position information for crews, and in the application of precision approach guidance.”