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Accident prevention through occurrence reporting
Aviation accidents rarely result from a single failure but rather from a combination of events - for example, an error in maintenance that causes a failure in flight that a member of the flight crew then responds to incorrectly. In other words, accidents result from a chain of events that make them difficult to analyze but also provide multiple opportunities to prevent them. If any link in such a fatal chain is removed than the accident can be avoided.
Thus, beyond accident investigation, the crucial element in prevention of aviation accidents is reporting and careful analysis of even the smallest incidents, failures and other occurrences in daily operations which may indicate the existence of potentially serious safety hazards which if not corrected may lead to accidents (accident precursors).
Occurrence reporting take a system wide approach to accident prevention and recognise that moving beyond blame is essential in enhancing safety in a proactive way – notions which have been confirmed through decades of safety and human factors research.
These important principles were recognised by the Community through Directive 2003/42/EC, which calls aviation professionals to report in a protected environment abnormal events or other irregular circumstances which, if not corrected, may lead to an accident. Directive 2003/42/EC ensures that all such reported information can be analysed, exchanged and disseminated, so that safety lessons can be learned. The Directive obliges Member States to ensure confidentiality of the information, in particular in relation to the identity of the reporter. The Directive also supports and encourages the establishment of voluntary occurrence reporting systems.
Directive 2003/42/EC was supplemented with implementing rules establishing a central European repository of information on civil aviation occurrences (Regulation 1321/2007) and dissemination of the information stored in the occurrence databases (Regulation 1330/2007). In 2008, over 41 thousands occurrences were stored in the central repository.
The central repository and exchange of information between the national databases of the EU Member States is supported by the European Commission through the ECCAIRS system (European Co-ordination centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems), managed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.
