AIR TRANSPORT REGULATION UNDER TRANSFORMATION: THE CASE OF SWITZERLAND

Journal of Air Transportation, 2005 by Finger, Matthias, Piers, Michel

ABSTRACT

Over the past five years, the Swiss air transport sector has witnessed an unprecedented number of accidents and incidents, leading to an independent analysis ordered by the government. The resulting report of 2003 identified significant regulatory and institutional deficiencies with direct implications for safely. The challenges to Switzerland's institutional regulatory framework were further exacerbated because of the bankruptcy of the Swiss national flag carrier (Swissair in 2002) and the pressure on Zurich Unique airport resulting from of a new over flight regime in Germany in 2003. On the basis of this report, the government has ordered a profound transformation of the Swiss institutional regulatory framework, among which the transformation of the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) into a regulator, whose predominant concern must be safety. This paper presents and critically analyzes the current transformation of the Swiss institutional regulatory regime against both regulation theory and safety performance criteria.

INTRODUCTION

The Swiss air transport sector has been struck, since the late 1990s, by a series of severe accidents. One may recall the crash of an MD-11 Swissair near Halifax in September 1998, the fatal accident of a Crossair Saab 340 in January 2000 and of another Crossair Avro 146 RJ, both near Zurich Airport, as well as most recently the mid-air collision on July 1, 2002, near Uberlingen (Germany) over Swiss air space. Simultaneously, the Swiss National Bureau of Accident Investigation (AAIB) had reported various cases of near misses, as well as shortcomings in air traffic control (ATC) equipment.

In response, the Swiss government had commissioned the Dutch Airspace Laboratory (NLR) with an external evaluation on the safety of air transport in Switzerland (NLR, 2003). The main objective of this evaluation, of which the two authors were part, was to analyze whether the current structures for ensuring aviation safety within Switzerland were appropriate, and make recommendations as to how to improve them. And indeed, the report showed that the safety performance of Swiss aviation over the last decade had been declining, whereas the safety performance of the other European states had been improving. Where Switzerland had clearly been ahead of these states before the 1990s, this lead had been lost, and a negative trend had set in.

The purpose of this article is not to reanalyze the safety performance of the Swiss aviation sector, nor summarize the findings of the NLR report, which is publicly available. Rather, this article focuses on one of the conceptual aspects treated in the NLR report, namely on the institutional dimension of air transport safety. While it uses the NLR data and is grounded in the Swiss case, our argumentation is more general, as we seek to: (a) conceptualize an ideal institutional framework for regulating air transport safety, and (b) design an organizational or institutional transformation process, by which such a framework can be reached.

In the first section we briefly recall the problem, that is, the declining safety performance in the Swiss air transport sector and the corresponding institutional problems, as identified in the NLR report. In the second section we will frame the problem in terms of regulation and corresponding regulatory institutions and develop an ideal institutional safety regulation framework. In the third section we will outline the institutional and organizational transformations needed in order to address to reach this ideal framework, again by referring to the Swiss case.

DIAGNOSIS: DECLINING SAFETY AND ITS INSTITUTIONAL ROOT CAUSES

The purpose of this first section is to identify the problem as one of safety performance. Such safety performance-as will be argued in the next section-is considered to be the result of corresponding public policies and subsequent implementation by means of corresponding institutional arrangements. This section will therefore also highlight the institutional problems, as identified in the Swiss case.

Over the past five years, the Swiss air transport sector has witnessed an unprecedented number of accidents and incidents. Air transport is an exceptionally safe mode of transport. Hence even a temporary increase in the number of accidents does not necessarily imply an unacceptable performance deficiency in absolute terms. However, public opinion, in general, and the judgement of the travelling public, in particular, is not based on safety performance in absolute terms, but on safety performance in relative terms, both over time with an expectancy of continuous improvement and in comparison to relevant international performance.' As shown in Figure 1, Swiss air transport has not faired well on either dimension. Not only does the accident rate (number of accidents per million flights) gradually increase over the last two decades but also the declining trend in safety performance in Switzerland is contrary to the worldwide improving trend and the improving trend in a smaller set of benchmark states of France, Germany, and the Netherlands.