Last year consolidated the 21st century airline industry's remarkable progress toward safer skies - a process that began in the second half of the 1990s
Last year was a 20-year low for airline crash fatalities. In 28 fatal accidents worldwide, a total of 466 people were killed in 2004, compared with 2003 - also an exceptionally safe year - in which 702 people were killed in 27 accidents. But the year was marred by an unusually high number of non-passenger aircraft crashes - 17, causing 49 fatalities - and by the divide in safety performance by type and region of operation that has existed for 20 years.
In 2004 there were no fatal accidents involving North American-, European- or Australian-registered large jets, continuing a clean record that has held since 2001. Of the five fatal accidents involving passenger jets, three of the aircraft were registered in Asia, one in Africa and one in North America - a regional jet on a positioning flight. Another six fatal passenger accidents involved scheduled regional and commuter turboprop flights. Most of the 17 fatal accidents involving non-passenger flights were cargo aircraft, including three jet freighters. It is not new for cargo operations to have a significantly worse safety record than passenger flights, but the proportionate difference was particularly marked in 2004.
Pilot disorientation looks likely to have caused the worst of 2004's large jet accidents in terms of casualities - the 3 January crash of a Boeing 737-300 operated by Egyptian charter carrier Flash Airlines in which all 13 crew and 135 passengers were killed. Another 90 lives - not included in the "accident" totals for 2004 - were lost when two flights in Russia were brought down on the same day by "illegal interference" - on-board explosions that were caused by sabotage.
CFIT again
Controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) looks to have caused seven of last year's 28 crashes (see table P38). This preliminary assessment of accident causes awaits confirmation by the official inquiries, but, even if confirmed, CFIT still would not dominate 2004 accidents in the way it has a number of previous years over the last two decades. Most of the other common causal factors - human factors, technical failure, loss of control, weather- and icing-related accidents - were among the explanations for fatal crashes.
The only year in the jet era that comes close to the 2004 safety record was 1984, when 448 people died in 29 fatal airline accidents. That year was extraordinarily safe by the standards of its time, but the accident rate - the number of fatal accidents per million flights in 1984 - was almost three times what it is now because there were far fewer flights then. According to the International Civil Aviation Organisation fatal accident rates for scheduled passenger airlines have reduced over the past 25 years from three in every million flights to about 0.5 fatal accidents per million flights.
Among the reasons for the improvement are ongoing co-operative efforts like the Civil Aviation Safety Team (CAST), a government-industry group that has as its goals reducing the US commercial aviation fatal accident rate by 80% from 1997 to 2007 and working with international organisations and regulatory authorities to reduce the worldwide rate.
CAST estimates safety enhancements developed so far will, by 2007, have reduced the fatality risk 73% in the USA and 62% in Europe. The challenge now is to encourage worldwide adoption of the enhancements, which include developing a safety culture.
A safety culture is "the way we do things around here when no-one is looking", says Stuart Matthew, head of the Flight Safety Foundation. "Under-developed countries do not have a total disregard for safety. It's a function of the whole infrastructure and of priorities," he says. Relative prosperity, for example, seems to be a factor in the political priority given to aviation safety - and not just in the Third World. Greece, for years something of a thorn in the side of the European Joint Aviation Authorities, is less economically strong than many of its peers in Western Europe and its political priorities have reflected this.
Although Greek airlines have a good safety record, the country's infrastructure has been poor in terms of airport and air traffic management equipment and performance standards. While the infrastructure has has improved dramatically in recent years, Greece is still assessed by the US Federal Aviation Administration under its International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) programme as Category 2, which means the Greek civil aviation authority, the HCAA, does not meet International Civil Aviation Organisation safety oversight standards.
A strong, effective safety culture "has to come by example, from the top", says Matthew, citing the work being done by the head of Greece's Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board Akrivos Tsolakis. As a result of Tsolakis' leadership, he says, it looks as if Greece is on track to develop a safety culture that will bring it the coveted IASA Category 1 rating (see box below).
Effectiveness questioned
The effectiveness of the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) countries' Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft (SAFA) scheme was called into question by the Flash Airlines 737-300 crash at Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt (see accident listings). Interim factual reports make clear that the crew lost control of the aircraft at night over the sea. It looks likely that the captain - who was the pilot flying - became disorientated and it took the co-pilot too long to realise what the captain's problem was before intervening.
The accident started an outcry in France when it was found that Flash had been banned by Switzerland.
This raised the question of why one European country can ban an airline and not the others. The European Commission declared the situation did not make sense, and the issue is now being politically investigated with a view to tightening procedures for sharing information between European states.
While 2004 was another success for global commercial aviation safety, there are still types and regions of operation that have a lot of catching up to do. If they did, accidents would reduce almost to zero. But terrorism remains a factor on the overall fatality totals, and becomes a more significant contributor to loss of life on aircraft as accident rates reduce.
The downing of a Sibir Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 and Volga-Avia Express Tupolev Tu-134 within minutes of each other on 24 August last year came after two terrorists - believed to have been Chechen suicide bombers - succeeded in boarding the flights at Moscow Domodedovo airport. This underlines that security, as well as safety, must be improved worldwide.
How 'safety culture' has spread
As well as technological improvements that have been contributing to the continual reduction in passenger airline fatal accident numbers (Flight International, 3-9 August 2004), there are other crucial influences. Building an industry "safety culture" has been the objective of enlightened aviation organisations over the last two decades. But because of numerous regulatory changes - and direct pressure from influential nations like the USA or blocs like the European Union - it is no longer possible for a country or an airline to be untouched by the pressure to improve.
A good industrial safety culture, according to safety analysts, is a "top-down" system: it is endorsed by the chief executive and senior executives, so the whole organisation buys into it (see quotations by Flight Safety Foundation head Stuart Matthew in main text). For example, if pilots take a decision for valid safety reasons to delay or divert a flight, in an airline with a top-down safety culture there would be no doubt that the management would back the pilot's decision.
But a crucial influence on safety culture comes also from national government level. "Safe" countries usually have safe airlines because they have a national aviation authority that is required and enabled to carry out safety oversight according to the standards laid down by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. Meanwhile, there are a number of measures that have been put in place - most in the past 10 years - that pressurise countries to operate a pro-active safety culture, including:
* The US International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) programme: this grades countries according to whether their NAAs met ICAO standards or not. Airlines registered in states that do not pass the US Federal Aviation Administration's test have their operations to the USA restricted (see box on P38). Also the IASA pass/fail grades for all countries audited are published on the FAA's website, which creates a name-and-shame incentive effect.
* Europe's Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft programme: airlines can have their aircraft grounded or operations restricted if shortcomings are found by inspectors when they land at European destinations.
* Within Europe, European Aviation Safety Agency regulations now require all aviation organisations to have a closed-loop safety management system (SMS) that meets legal criteria, and European law makes management answerable for safe operations.
* ICAO's Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) : ICAO regularly audits all states' aviation safety oversight systems, operational practices and standards. It now does the same for security with its Universal Security Audit Programme.
* Independent organisations like the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) have, during the last 20 years, increased their influence on the growing air transport industry and with national regulators and ICAO. Working with industry to gather and analyse safety data, the FSF has created "data-driven" rationales for action in specific areas like controlled flight into terrain, and approach and landing accidents reduction.
* Regulators like the FAA and the European Joint Aviation Authorities - and several international organisations representing large geographic regions - have developed safety action plans prioritised according to risk.
Finally, individual airlines increasingly recognise that safety, especially as the marketplace liberalises and competition grows, is an imperative for commercial success. The International Air Transport Association, which has been pushing that message for more than 20 years, provides safety services to member airlines including its own safety audit scheme.
Safety culture germinates in Athens
Greece is still rated Category 2 on the US Federal Aviation Administration's International Aviation Safety Assessment programme. Category 1 is a pass, Category 2 a failure - it means the FAA has assessed the Greek civil aviation authority, the HCAA, as not meeting International Civil Aviation Organisation standards for safety oversight.
In Athens, however, there have been some positive structural and attitude changes in recent years. The ministry of transport and communications has taken accident investigation out of the HCAA and made it an independent organisation - the Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board (AAIASB).
The AAIASB's chairman since it was set up four years ago has been Akrivos Tsolakis, who is also responsible for setting up the regional branch of the Flight Safety Foundation for south-east Europe and Greece, of which he is president and chief executive.
In 2003, Tsolakis and a dedicated team of aviation people mounted their first AAIASB regional safety conference in Athens.
The event drew on international expertise and was strongly attended by Greek and regional industry and airlines. At that conference, however, the transport minister, who had agreed to open the event, failed to turn up.
There was a tangible change in the atmosphere of the second conference in December 2004. The new minister of transport and communications, Michael Liapis, opened the conference and stayed to talk to the delegates. The attendance doubled to more than 600, many of them young people from all sectors of the industry, airlines, military aviation, the HCAA, and some university students.
Previously the Greek aviation industry's complaint had been that if the government failed to take the lead, improving the national safety culture would be difficult or impossible. Tsolakis says he hopes those days are now past.
DAVID LEARMOUNT / LONDON
Source: Flight International
