What is Safety Assurance?
Safety Assurance processes which go on within an SMS is the investigation of incidents and accidents.
What is the SOLE aim of Safety Assurance?
The SOLE aim of these investigations is to establish anything which can be done to prevent it from happening again.
Why is Risk control used and what ways are there to control risks?
New Risk Controls are often implemented in response to major findings. These can be in the form of:
- New or additional Training
- New Procedures
- New Limitations etc
What are the two sub-categories in unsafe acts of operators and what are they?
Errors - represent the mental or physical activities of individuals that fail to achieve their intended outcome.
Violations - refer to the willful disregard for the rules and
regulations that govern the safety of flight.
What are Skill-Based Errors?
Errors occurring in the operator’s execution of a routine highly practised task relating to procedures, training or proficiency that result in an unsafe situation.
What are Decision Errors?
Intentional behaviours or actions of the operators that proceed as planned but the plan itself proves inadequate or inappropriate for the situation
What are Perceptual Errors?
Errors occurring when an operator’s sensory input is degraded and a decision is made based on faulty information
What are Routine Violations?
- Bending the rules which CASA has a Zero Tolerance for.
* Habitual actions on the part of the operator and are tolerated by the governing authority.
What are Exceptional violations?
Isolated departures from authority, not necessarily indicative of an individual’s typical behaviour pattern
What are the three sub-categories of Preconditions for Unsafe Acts and what are they?
- Environmental Factors - refer to the physical and technological factors that affect practices, conditions and actions of an individual that could result in human error or an unsafe situation.
- Condition of Operators - refers to the adverse mental state, adverse physiological state and physical/mental limitations factors that affect practices, conditions or actions of individuals and result in human error or an unsafe situation.
- Personnel Factors refer to the CRM and personal readiness factors that affect practices, conditions or actions of individuals and result in human error or an unsafe situation.
What is Physical Environment?
Both the operational environment/settings (e.g., weather)
and the ambient environment (e.g., heat)
• Flying into adverse weather -> Reduced visual cues -> Spatial disorientation -> Perceptual errors
• Heat -> Dehydration -> Reduced pilot’s concentration level -> Slower decision making
What is some Physical Environment factors?
- Weather
- Altitude
- Terrian
- Lighting
- Vibration
- Toxins in the cockpit
What is Technological Environment?
Encompasses a variety of issues including the design of
equipment and controls, display/interface characteristics, checklist layouts, task factors and automation.
What are some Technological Environment factors?
- Equipment/control design
- Checklist layout
- Display/interface characteristics
- Automation
What is Adverse Mental State?
Mental conditions that would affect performance (e.g., stress, mental fatigue, over-confidence, motivation)
What are some Adverse Mental State factors?
- Loss of situational awareness
- Complacency
- Stress
- Overconfidence
- Poor flight vigilance
- Task saturation
- Alertness
- Get-home-itis
- Mental fatigue
- Circadian dysrhythmia
- Channelised attention
- Distractions
What is Adverse Physiological States?
Medical or physiological conditions that preclude safe
operations.
What are some Adverse Physiological State factors?
- Mental illness
- Hypoxia
- Physical fatigue
- Intoxication
- Motion sickness
- Effects of OTC medications
What is Physical/Mental Limitations?
Refer to those instances when operational requirements
exceed the capabilities of the individual at the controls.
What are some Physical/Mental Limitation factors?
- Visual limitations
- Insufficient reaction time
- Information overloads
- inadequate experience for the complexity of situations.
- Incompatible physical capabilities.
- Lack of aptitude to fly
- Lack of sensory input
What is Crew Resource Management (CRM)?
Factors include communication, coordination, planning and teamwork issues
What are some Crew Resource Management (CRM) factors?
- Failed to conduct adequate belief
- Lack of teamwork
- Lack of assertiveness
- Poor Communication/coordination within and between aircraft, ATC, etc.
- Misinterpretation of traffic calls
- Failure of leadership
What is Personal Readiness?
Refers to off-duty activities required to perform optimally on the job such as adhering to crew rest requirements, alcohol restrictions and other off-duty mandates.
What are some Personal Readiness factors?
- Failure to adhere to crew rest requirements
- Inadequate training
- Self-mediating
- overexertion while off duty
- Poor dietary practices
- Patterns of poor risk judgement
