Detect and Address Emerging Safety Risks Before Accidents Occur

In the past, the aviation industry has improved safety accident by accident. Experts looked at what happened and corrected the problems that contributed to a specific accident. The United States and Canada have approached aviation safety in this way for more than 70 years, which has helped to create an air transportation safety record that is unsurpassed in the world.

But now we are victims of our own success. Rather than continuing to take a forensic approach that depends on increasingly rare airline accidents to detect safety risks, a preventive approach to detecting hazards before accidents occur is needed. We must look at the aviation system as a whole, considering aircraft design, maintenance, air traffic control, flight operations, and training as integral parts of one system, rather than as isolated and unrelated elements.

Safety data must be collected within a safety-centered and nonpunitive culture in which pilots and other aviation employees feel comfortable reporting emerging risks before accidents happen. Voluntary safety reporting programs, such as the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP), Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA), and the soon-to-be implemented Voluntary Aviation Safety Information Sharing Process (VASIP), are essential elements of a preventive culture.

While we are making progress, corporate culture issues remain at some airlines that refuse to move away from a punitive approach to dealing with safety issues.

ALPA urges all airlines to give their employees the opportunity to fully participate in voluntary safety reporting programs. Airlines also must enable employees to feel confident in using these reporting programs through a proactive safety culture and with international protection of safety data from misuse.