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Meeting airline safety, security challenges amid big regional disparities

5th February 2016

By: Keith Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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Every day, some 100 000 commercial aviation flights take off and land, transporting, on average, a million people and 150 000 t of cargo, over a global network of 54 000 routes. These figures were highlighted by International Air Transport Association (Iata) director-general and CEO Tony Tyler at his organisation’s annual Global Media day in December.

“The top priority for the industry is safety – always has been and always will be,” he affirmed. “Alongside safety is security. Of course, it’s a reality that we live in a dangerous world. The threat of terrorism is present and active. A new dimension has been added with the movement of foreign terrorist fighters. And the sad reality is that our industry – despite being an instrument of peace – continues to be a target.”

Top Priority
“Safety is everyone in aviation’s top priority and by working together, we have helped to make commercial air travel the safest form of long- distance transportation the world has ever known,” assured Iata senior VP: safety and flight operations Gilberto López Meyer. “However, we cannot relax our focus. We must continue to drive improvements in safety. For aviation professionals, even one accident and any loss of life is too much. We continue to work towards a goal of zero accidents.”

The year 2014 saw the industry’s lowest jet hull loss rate ever, at 0.23 such losses per million sectors flown. As recently as 2010, the figure was 0.79, falling to 0.58 in 2011, to 0.28 in 2012, before spiking upwards to 0.41 in 2013 and dropping sharply again in 2014. For the first six months of 2015 (full-year figures are not yet available), the jet hull loss rate was 0.31. Although the loss rate for six months cannot be compared with the loss rates for full years, it does indicate that 2015 will not be as good a year as 2014. (It should be noted that the tragedy of Germanwings Flight 9525 in March last year, in which 150 people died, is not classified as an accident because the airliner involved was deliberately flown into the ground by its copilot.)

Unusually, Iata member airlines had a higher jet hull loss rate during the first half of last year than that of the industry as a whole – 0.46, representing the loss of four aircraft. But, it is important to note, there was not a single fatality in any of these four losses. (The Iata membership jet hull loss rate for 2014 was just 0.12; the organisation comprises 260 airlines responsible for 83% of global air transport services.)

What are the main safety issues today? They are the great disparity in safety between different regions, the tracking of airliners, the mental and emotional health of pilots, remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) – also known as unmanned air vehicles or drones – and safety in the cabin.

Over the period 2010–2014, the jet hull loss rate for North Asia was a mere 0.06, while that for sub-Saharan Africa was 3.94 – the highest in the world. North America was the second-safest region, with a rate of 0.13, followed by Europe with 0.18, then Asia-Pacific with 0.54, Latin America and the Caribbean with 0.91, the Middle East and North Africa with 0.99 and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS – States formerly part of the Soviet Union) with 2.71. In terms of total accidents, the 2010–2014 rate for North Asia was 0.80, for North America 1.34, Europe 1.88, Asia-Pacific 2.65, Latin America and the Caribbean 3.16, the Middle East and North Africa 4.11, the CIS 5.68 and sub-Saharan Africa 11.64. The good news is that, in nearly all these regions, including Africa, the trend has been downwards – that is, safety has been increasing.

To promote safety, in 2003, the Iata Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) was created. This was and is designed to evaluate an airline’s operational management and control systems. It is compulsory for all Iata members to undergo the IOSA and remain on the IOSA register. It is recognised and accepted internationally, including by non-Iata airlines. There are now 403 airlines on the IOSA register, of which 142 are not members of Iata. An enhanced IOSA has been implemented since last September.

IOSA “ensures that an operator’s infrastructure and overall safety management systems meet the highest standards”, pointed out López Meyer. “While no operational standard can guarantee that an operator will never have an event (accident), the data shows clearly that operators who maintain these high standards have better safety performance over time.” For example, for the first half of last year, the global total accident rate per million flights for non-IOSA airlines was 2.65, while that for IOSA airlines was 1.45. For the whole of 2014, the non-IOSA airline total accident rate was 3.37, while the IOSA airline accident rate was only 1.09. For sub-Saharan Africa in 2014, the non-IOSA accident rate was 19.62 and the IOSA accident rate was 1.95!

Following the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 in March 2014, aircraft tracking has “been at the top of the industry’s agenda”, stated Tyler. “The loss of MH370 was, of course, a huge shock. Although one piece of the aircraft was found on Reunion Island, the wreckage has not yet been located. And we still don’t know the cause of its disappearance. But early on, the industry recognised that, if a large passenger aircraft like a Boeing 777 could disappear, we needed to improve the way that aircraft are tracked.”

The MH370 affair led to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) holding a High Level Safety Conference in February last year. (ICAO is a specialised agency of the United Nations.) This resulted in the Normal Aircraft Tracking Implementation Initiative (NATII), in which Iata is involved. “Essentially, the purpose of the NATII was to ‘test-drive’ the proposed tracking standard and recommended practices to see if they were fit for purpose,” he explained. “And the NATII exercises showed us that it was unrealistic to set a 2016 timeframe and, so, that was pushed back to 2018. Regardless of this, many airlines are in the process of equipping and others are making improvements or upgrades to existing tracking capabilities. For me, this is a great example of industry and governments working together to tackle issues with pragmatic measures.” The new implementation date will allow all operators to get ready for automated reporting (which was not originally regarded as necessary). ICAO and Iata are jointly developing a new set of relevant standards and recommended practices.

The Germanwings Flight 9525 tragedy has brought the mental and emotional health of pilots to the fore. Since 1980, there have been eight confirmed or suspected cases in which pilots committed suicide by crashing their aircraft. Last May, the US Federal Aviation Administration set up a Pilot Fitness Aviation Rule Making Committee, in which Iata participated and which presented its report in November. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) set up a task force of 14 high-level repre- sentatives of authorities, airlines, flight crew associations and medical advisers. It presented six recommendations. These are: there should always be two persons in the cockpit; pilots should be psychologically evaluated before being employed by an airline, and the psychological element of the aeromedical assessment should be reinforced; random alcohol and drugs testing should be carried out by airlines; aeromedical examiners should be subject to robust oversight; a Europewide aeromedical data bank should be set up; and airlines should create pilot support systems. EASA plans to propose a combination of regulatory and nonregulatory measures during this year.

The use of RPAS – this is the term used by ICAO – is growing very rapidly. Even those sold as toys can be very capable. “The rise in their popularity has coincided with a huge increase in reports of RPAS operating dangerously close to manned aircraft and airports,” noted López Meyer. Iata processed data, 87% of which came from North American sources, has revealed a rapid increase in reports of close encounters between airliners and RPAS – from a little over 30 in November 2014 to almost 120 in June 2015. Most of these events involved small RPAS (of less than six feet in length or diameter). Of the 81% of such encounters in which the altitude of the RPAS was reported, 13.2% were between ground level and 400 ft, 17.3% were from 401 ft to 1 000 ft, 49.1% from 1 001 ft to 5 000 ft, 15.6% from 5 001 ft to 10 000 ft, and 4.8% were above 10 000 ft.

The potential danger of RPAS was also discussed at the ICAO High Level Safety Conference. Iata is urging all countries to take all steps necessary to ensure air transport safety. “To ensure the safe operation of RPAS, especially in close vicinity of aircraft and airports, there is a need for awareness and education of RPAS operators; States to ensure that all RPAS operate within clearly defined and known limitations; [and] enforceable legal and/or admini- strative sanctions for using RPAS in an unsafe or dangerous manner,” he urged.

New consumer technologies are bringing new risks through passenger luggage, both check-in and carry-on. Many of these are powered by lithium-ion batteries which are not (unlike those used, for example, in cellphones, tablets and laptops) manufactured to airline-acceptable standards, creating potential fire risks. Fire is an enormous threat on an aircraft, which is unavoidably full of flammable materials (including the alloys from which the airframe is made).

“Recently, questions are being raised by operators regarding the acceptability of small vehicles that are powered by lithium-ion batteries in passenger-checked and/or carry-on baggage,” reported López Meyer. “Some examples of these small lithium-ion battery-powered vehicles are: airwheel, solo wheel, overboard, mini-segway, [and] balance wheel. They are considered personal electronic devices, not mobility aids. As such, they are subject to different rules to wheelchairs or other mobility devices. Iata is currently developing guidance for the industry on how to manage this emerging issue.”


Attractive Target
The security issues facing airlines have, if anything, proliferated in the past couple of years. There are three main areas for concern: terrorism and the movement of terrorists; conflict zones; and cyber security. “Risk management is at the core of how we address security issues,” noted Iata global director: aviation security and facilitation Carolina Ramirez.

“Aviation still remains a very attractive target for terrorists or for the commission of acts of unlawful interference,” she pointed out. “And that means that our job today is even more relevant, challenging and needs the support and appropriate resources to stay always a step ahead of the next plot. And that is not easy.”

The threat was reafffirmed by the destruction of Russian airline Metrojet’s Flight 9268 by a terrorist bomb shortly after take-off from Sharm el Sheikh, in Egypt, with the loss of 224 lives, last October. And it is known that numerous volunteers for the so-called Islamic State (IS) have used commercial flights to get to the neighbourhood of Iraq and Syria, after which they have moved overland into the IS-controlled zone. Others have used commercial flights to return home from the warzone.

“Along with keeping our aircraft secure during and after flight, we also want to keep terrorists from getting onboard in the first place,” she affirmed. This also applies to those seeking to travel to or from the Syria/Iraq warzone. Two tools exist to gather data on passengers – Advance Passenger Information (API) and Passenger Name Record (PNR). API helps identify people who may be on a watchlist, while PNR (which uses reservation data) allows a more profound analysis of a passenger’s travel history, trends and associations. Today, more than 60 countries (including most of the Northern Hemisphere, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, New Zealand and South Africa) have agreements to share this data. This number is expected to grow and could number 150 by 2020.

Unfortunately, many States ignore international standards and practices for API and PNR and try and enforce their own. On top of this, in too many countries, different agencies require that airlines separately supply them with API and PNR data. This results in inefficiencies, time-wasting, increased risk of terrorists slipping through the gaps and extra costs for the airlines. “ICAO, Iata and the World Customs Organisation have agreed on global messaging standards for both API and PNR, including a specified set of data elements, together with a standardised method for their transfer from airlines to governments,” she highlighted. “Airlines, service providers and governments have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in systems that comply with internationally agreed standards and messaging formats for API and PNR.”

Iata wants government programmes to collect passenger data to be aligned with these standards, for governments and the air transport industry to work together and communicate with each other and use the same standards, and that these programmes should ensure efficiency by only requiring the necessary data (for API, this should be only a passenger’s passport information). There is also a need for States to make their data protection and privacy laws compatible with the requirements of the PNR system.

The dangers posed by conflict zones were dramatically exposed by the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, with the loss of 298 lives. The Dutch Safety Board concluded in its report (issued in October) that the airliner had been destroyed by a medium-range surface-to-air missile. No country or international organisation had issued any warning of risks to airliners operating in that airspace, nor had any banned their airliners from doing so.

“While Iata and the airline industry will do everything within their control to address the issues that have been brought into such sharp relief by the downing of MH17, a key area stands out where change is urgently needed: States must provide airlines with guidance regarding threats to their passengers, crew and aircraft,” she stressed. “This information must be accessible in a timely, authoritative, accurate, consistent and unequivocal way. While airlines do try and share pertinent information, including security information, this in no way is a substitute for the authoritative and intelligence-based resources that are available to States.”

Worldwide, commercial aviation relies heavily on complex and ever more integrated information technology systems. That makes it “an attractive target of [sic] those intent on doing cybermischief and theft or worse,” she warned. Cyberattacks could be against customer databases; booking, check-in and routine business (email, network) systems as well as crew planning systems; flight planning, aircraft tracking, ground communications, and departure control systems. And then there is the potential for cyberattacks on aircraft onboard systems, including navigation, other avionics, communications and so on. “Now, aircraft and system manufacturers invest millions of dollars to protect these systems from cyber- attack. And we are not aware of any successful attacks on any such cockpit systems. However, we must always be on our guard and be aware of the potential for insider threats.”

During the first 11 months of 2015, at least five airlines and two airport operators had made public that they had been subject to targeted online attacks. “There are a lot of challenges that have not [yet] been identified. Cyber is an evolving threat,” said Ramirez. “Information from past events (cyberattacks) does not allow us to foresee future events. We do need to be cyberliterate.”

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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