Air Charter Safety Foundation Aviation Safety Action Program Continued from page 11 followed and safety is compromised. That’s where ASAP can help. “The whole premise behind the program is determining root cause of errors and mistakes,” says Bryan Burns, ACSF President. Most ASAP reports involve things like altitude deviations, navigation errors or speed restriction violations. “So, you just had a deviation. What was going on in the cockpit, what was happening?” said Burns. Filing an ASAP report pro- vides crewmembers with immu- nity from FAA for inadvertent, unintentional violations of the Federal Aviation Regulations to encourage people to speak up when something goes wrong. “Being forthright and honest, it leads to better procedures, better training,” Burns said, “and helps prevent the same mistakes from being repeated. And that makes the operat- ing environment safer for everyone.” Such reporting programs have been used by the employees of major airlines and other large-fleet opera- tors for the past 25 years, generat- ing tens of thousands of reports that alert the carriers and FAA to problems that can be addressed by changes in training and procedures. ACSF officials wanted to provide a way for smaller operators to gain the benefit of similar feedback, and began working closely with FAA in 2012. With encouragement from FAA senior management in Washington, officials of the agency’s Great Lakes Region headquarters got the ball rolling. ACSF signed an MOU with the Great Lakes Region, and operators who wanted to participate in ASAP then signed MOUs with their local Flight Standards District Offices (FSDOs). The ACSF-managed ASAP pro- gram is now approved in the con- tinuous United States including the FAA Eastern, Central, Great Lakes, Southern, Southwest, Western-Pacific and Northwest Mountain regions. As of November 2015, there were 34 operators enrolled in the ACSF-administered ASAP—nineteen Part 135 charter operators and fifteen Part 91 corporate flight departments. Over the past three years, employees of those 34 operators have gener- ated nearly 350 ASAP reports. There are another six operators in various stages of signing the MOU/em- ployee training process that should be participating before year’s end. Burns said the program is struc- tured so ACSF, not FAA or the operator, shoulders 90 percent of the administrative burden. “In all respects, it’s a win-win for all parties involved,” Burns said. In addition to encouraging em- ployees to report safety issues, Burns says ASAP participation results in a lot of de-identified informa- tion sharing among companies and safety administrators. “People network knowing that safety isn’t competitive,” he said. ASAP UPDATE by ACSF FAA Administrator Michael Huerta recently announced a new compliance philosophy aimed at improving collaboration with the aviation industry and reducing accidents that will benefit companies participating in ASAP. Under the new policy, events reported and accepted into ASAP will be handled with the appropriate corrective action, as determined by the event review committee (ERC). There will no longer be any FAA administrative action for events deemed to be “non-sole-source” that re- sulted in unintentional violations, such as altitude deviations, navigational errors, etc. This new policy, which became effec- tive October 1, 2015, provides additional incentive for companies to use ASAP to determine the root causes of events in order to improve safety, without fear of retribution. Note: For a comprehensive review of the new FAA compliance philosophy, see FAA’s New Philosophy: Less Enforcement, More Compliance, ABJ, 3rd Quarter 2015. The ACSF-managed ASAP program is now approved in every FAA region in the lower 48 United States. This means that any Part 135 operator, 91K management company, or 91 flight department in the nation can participate in the ACSF ASAP program and benefit from this enhanced safety tool. 12 Aviation Business Journal | 4th Quarter 2015 Aviation Business Journal | 4th Quarter 2015 12
