Aviation Safety Reporting in the 90th FS

Flying Safety, July, 2004 by Dave Otto

As professionals in the aviation safety business, our job includes the identification and control of hazards. This description alone implies a pro-active process. Ideally, we should be able to foresee every activity or condition that leads to an accident, and then eliminate that hazard or mitigate its effects. Unfortunately, in practice, safety shops often end up reacting to hazards in the form of accident investigations instead of being pro-active and identifying the causal factors before the incident occurs.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

How can we turn this trend around? What can we do to identify what unacceptable risks are being taken, and where can we get insight into where our next accident may originate? As is often the case, we need only look to our civilian counterparts to find the answer to these questions. Enter the Aviation Safety Reporting System and the Aviation Safety Action Program.

The Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) is a national hazard reporting system that is managed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It is a system that allows anyone involved in aviation operations to voluntarily report incidents that compromise aviation safety. The reports are made anonymously and on a non-retribution basis. NASA collects these reports as an independent third party and gives them to the FAA, which in turn manages a database of reported incidents. Although the events are not investigated extensively, selected ones are published in a bulletin entitled "Callback" as a method of increasing awareness of potential hazards.

The Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) is a voluntary agreement between air carriers and the FAA. It allows the employees of these air carriers to report conditions or information that is potentially hazardous and may lead to an accident. Similar to ASRS, all information is submitted on a voluntary basis and, under the agreement, the reports may not be used as a basis for punishment or disciplinary action by the FAA or the air carrier. Once a report is received, it is given to a committee comprised of representatives from the FAA, the air carrier and possibly the employees union. The committee comes to an acceptable resolution of the problem, thereby eliminating or reducing risk. The program benefits all that are involved by allowing the air carrier to address problems before they arise into major problems or accidents, and by allowing the FAA to access information which would not normally be available without a voluntary reporting program.

So what do a couple of civilian safety programs have to do with us blue-suiters? Simple. If we can enact similar programs, it will be a step toward the pro-active process of identifying hazards in advance and allowing us to address them before they cause a mishap. We can use the information gathered through such programs to let our commanders and supervisors have a "finger on the pulse of the squadron" so they can make good risk management decisions. Individuals can also benefit from the information by having an increased awareness of where others are exposed to risk and be cognizant of it in their own operations. Flight Safety Officers can use the information to tailor safety briefings and focus safety topics on a monthly basis. In all, we can use the information to prevent mishaps, which is our overarching goal.

If this all sounds like a bunch of "pie in the sky" theory to you, let me give you a practical example of how our squadron has implemented a system of hazard reporting. This simple program involves only personal integrity and poker chips. Intrigued? Read on.

We first identified eight hazard areas that are fairly common to any fighter squadron and, if they occur, can result in a mishap or at least an undesirable incident. They are:

1. Violation of altitude blocks within 10 NM

2. Violation of the bubble (500-foot aircraft separation when maneuvering)

3. Violation of the ACBT floor

4. Overflying Bingo fuel

5. Being outside TF parameters below MSA

6. Exceeding air to ground delivery parameters

7. Violating cloud clearances

8. Airspace violations

The idea here is that each of these categories is already scrutinized and debriefed on every sortie by the flight lead. In most cases, an incident goes no further than that. If we somehow track these occurrences on an anonymous basis, we can then honestly look at where our risk is highest and where our prevention emphasis needs to be.

After these categories were identified, we needed a way to track their occurrence. That's where the poker chips come in. We bought a bunch of poker chips along with four small containers, one for each briefing room in our squadron. We marked the poker chips in eight distinct ways and correlated each marking to one of our eight categories. Once that was done, we posted a chart in each briefing room showing the poker chip markings and the associated hazard. We also put a supply of chips in each room along with the drop box for the chips.