The heads of six national confidential incident reporting systems (CIRS) have agreed to use the Internet to post information and data derived from reporting systems, and to transmit requests for information about safety.
According to Jean-Pol Henrotte, head of the intra-European system EUCARE, the Internet bulletin board site is designed to disseminate lessons learned rather than report individual incidents, so as not to compromise confidentiality.
The agreement follows a meeting between the heads of six CIRS (from Australia, Germany, Russia, South Africa, the UK and the USA, plus delegates from France, Japan, Norway and New Zealand which do not have a confidential reporting system infrastructure) at Potsdam, Germany.
Henrotte also says that if a national CIRS recognises a dangerous trend from its own reports, information on the danger may be exchanged between CIRS by fax. EUCARE and the UK system, CHIRP, already have a data-exchange system.
Delegates to the conference were also keen to extend the reporting system from aircrew, air traffic controllers and maintenance engineers, as at present, to include cabin crew, says Henrotte.
Source: Flight International
