Given that these new remote pilot aircraft (RPAs) will join the highly secure existing infrastructure, the undeniable safety of aviation operations remains a problem for the safe integration of drones and air taxis into the National Airspace System (NAS).
The aviation industry was born in 1903 when the Wright brothers first successfully flew heavier machines than air, but there were no other objects besides birds and occasional hot air balloons. This is not the case with irregular aviation, as we are becoming an industry that is growing when we have over 45,000 crews every day in the US, including civilian, freight and commercial airliners.
So how did the system that manages that amount of traffic become so secure and reliable? One clear answer is that for over 120 years, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have analyzed and investigated all accidents and incidents, including aircraft, and have refined and tuned the Air Traffic Control (ATC) system we know today. The four pillars of pilot training, aircraft design/manufacturing, weather monitoring/prediction, and ATC procedures are tailored to points that are rare, despite the fact that aviation accidents are not completely eliminated.
Another component of this operational safety excellence is a lesser known non-resistant aviation voluntary reporting program implemented and managed by the FAA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). These online confidential reporting systems are key components of a larger operational safety infrastructure, designed and implemented to provide a vast database of large and small occurrences that can contribute to the constant improvement of the system.
The most important and most commonly used programs are:
as soon as possible (Aviation Safety Action Program). The system encourages voluntary reporting of safety issues and events that will draw attention to employees of specific certificate holders. This is mainly part of 121 commercial airline pilots.atsap (Air Traffic Safety Action Program). This is an agreement between the FAA, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), and the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) that promotes a voluntary, supportive and non-negative environment for FAA Air Traffic employees to openly report safety concerns. ATSAP-X. The program aims to encourage controllers and their managers to voluntarily provide safety-related information through an automated platform, allowing FAAs to learn and mitigate aviation safety hazards.Safer Fct (Federal Contract Tower). This is an agreement between FAA, NATCA, Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), Professional Air Traffic Controllers Inc. (PATCO Inc.), and federal contract tower companies that promote a voluntary, cooperative, and non-immune environment for FAA contract air traffic controllers to openly report safety events and concerns.foqa (Flight operation quality guarantee). The system collects and analyzes digital flight data generated during normal operation. These programs provide greater insight into the total environment of flight operations. FOQA data is unique because it can provide objective information that is not otherwise available. The information and insights provided by FOQA can improve safety by significantly improving training effectiveness, operational procedures, maintenance and engineering procedures, and air traffic control procedures. 46 US operators currently have FAA-approved FOQA programs. ASRS (Aviation Safety Reporting System). This program was It was founded in 1976 as a partnership between NASA and FAA. The ASRS is confidential, non-resistant and is available to all participants in the NAS who wish to voluntarily report safety incidents and circumstances. This is a system that is primarily used by the private pilots and other non-part 121 operators in Part 91.vdrp (Voluntary disclosure reporting program). The system provides incentives to airlines, repair stations, qualified fractional ownership programs, or other eligible FAA regulatory entities to voluntarily identify, report, and correct instances of non-violation of the regulations. The program allows the FAA to oversee and participate in route cause analysis of events leading to violations.
All this data is loaded into ASIAS (Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing System). This allows users to run integrated queries across multiple databases, search the extensive warehouse of safety data, and view elements related to arrays in useful formats.
With all these separate systems and the vast amount of constantly reported safety data, who is responsible for understanding it all and turning it into a practical item that actually improves aviation safety?
The answer is not intuitive, and includes not only FAA and NASA, but also a company known as MITER, created in 1958 as a private nonprofit organization to provide engineering and technical guidance to the US Air Force. The work served as the foundation for the creation of the first federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), sponsored by the Department of Defense.
Miter holds meetings twice a year. It will host a meeting where the FAA, NASA and several others will discuss and analyze the data and turn it into concrete actions that will continuously improve aviation safety. The Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) is responsible for officially making these recommendations.
All of these above-mentioned organizations' websites focus on private aviation, with almost everyone referring to aircraft that are not piloted as part of their mission, so it is necessary to assume that the system is being provided with reports of accidents and accidents, including drones.
Through the creation of the Drone Safety Team (DST) in 2020, a partnership between industry governments with the mandate to ensure the safe operation of NAS's unmanned aerial vehicle systems (UAS), safe aviation families are pursuing a similar approach to safety recommendations. DST strives to enable secure integration of UAS by defining consensus-based security enhancements based on data-driven processes and collaboration between members of the UAS industry.
I know there are many acronyms, and it all sounds a bit complicated, and I agree to this feature to some degree. But we should face it: we have a very secure NAS, and adding thousands of drones and air taxis while maintaining the current ATC infrastructure requires the many technology and cooperation of all stakeholders.
So let's embrace these non-agricultural and spontaneous reporting systems and add salt grains to empty operational safety.
