2023 in aviation is set to be a year like no other. As the aviation industry accelerates out of the effects of the COVID-19 downturn, we reflect on how the pandemic’s effects — and the three years since 2019 —have changed aviation forever. In the most recent article in our eight-part series, we talked to the US and European regulators, the FAA and EASA…
How do you safely shut down entire sections of one of the world’s largest, most complex and most safety-oriented industries during a global pandemic — and how do you start it up again when it’s appropriate to do so? What lessons have been learned from the experience, and how, over the past three years of learning to deal with the effects of COVID-19, are regulators approaching safety in new and different ways? Hear from the spokespeople for the US and European regulators, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), who collated responses to technical questions on behalf of their respective experts.
“The COVID19 crisis accelerated digitalisation initiatives within regulators as well as for industry,” EASA tells us. To take one example of change that occurred, remote oversight was born out of necessity, but proved to be quite effective.”
Indeed, the scale of the challenge for EASA was unusually vast: unlike the FAA or, say, other regulators in jurisdictions such as Singapore or Japan, EASA oversees more than two dozen national jurisdictions, many of which implemented their own restrictions on travel at a national level.
Here, EASA took a pragmatic, risk-based approach to on-site oversight visits in particular, establishing two principles in particular:
- EASA is supporting the organisations wherever we can – with guidance, advice and flexibility in our approach.
- The difficulty in performing on-site visits will not in itself trigger any suspension or limitation on certificates. The Agency will use adapted procedures to maintain the oversight level necessary for safe operations during these unprecedented conditions.
EASA was, its spokesperson tells us, “is clear that it [remote auditing] will not fully replace on-site audits, but the two methods can, and should, co-exist and complement each other. Finding the right balance is key as the economics of each type of audit may invite excessive use of remote audits. This is something we are working on.”
It’s informative to note the differences — and indeed the similarities — between EASA’s initial June 2020 Review of Aviation Safety Issues Arising from the COVID-19 Pandemic report [PDF] and the subsequent version from April 2021 [PDF]. EASA was very clear early on that it was leveraging the European Safety Risk Management process to identify and prioritise issues arising from these necessary prioritisations.
The full list of risks identified, and when they were identified, is a fascinating read, and indeed a valuable one as we look back over the last three years to see how aviation safety management evolved over time. Risks new to the 2021 version included an increased risk of cyber security issues owing to the changing way businesses (including aviation) work and reductions in administrative staff, transfers of pilots from one fleet to another resulting in low type hours, the rapid growth in cargo organisations during the pandemic, and the risks of carrying potentially flammable hand sanitisers in substantial quantities within the cabin.
More widely, EASA notes that aviation’s reliance on digital data before the pandemic threw up a number of issues during it.
“The industry, and EASA, are becoming more data driven and increasingly data rich. This meant we had to cope with a situation where data was no longer so abundant: no more flights, or a severe reduction in flights, equals less data,” the regulator says. “We need to make sure that our analytic capabilities allow for decision making also in situations like this. This is a valid observation for regulators and especially for industry. Safety Management Systems proved to be a key enabler of resilience.”
Indeed, regulators leaned hard on these systems, usually referred to by the acronym SMS, and in many ways the reliance on the robustness of the program’s methodologies was a very positive sign for aviation. As these systems continue to evolve, work is ongoing to learn the lessons of the pandemic in how they worked — and, in the spirit of continuous improvement, what could be done better.
Across the Atlantic, the US FAA tells us it “issued extensive regulatory relief and guidance, which included working with the Commercial Aviation Safety Team to develop a comprehensive checklist of factors the industry should monitor due to dynamic changes resulting from the pandemic.”
This included its COVID-19 information hub, which includes regulatory updates, guidance and resources on a variety of topics: from slot usage to in-cabin cargo transport, pilot training, flight attendant exemptions, the CARES pandemic assistance act, all the way through to the carriage — and administration to flight crew — of COVID-19 vaccines, and much more.
A reading in reverse chronological order of the agency’s coronavirus-related updates is an informative into the agency’s priorities, as well as how thinking on a variety of issues evolved.
As a result, the agency’s spokesperson sums up, “this focus ensured the aviation system remained safe, resilient, and open for business and was able to rebound successfully when air travel returned to pre-pandemic levels.”
The FAA uses a number of digital systems, programs and methodology, many of which have evolved during the pandemic, including its Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing(ASIAS) data-driven program, the Aviation Safety Infoshare event, the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST), its Safety Assurance System (SAS), SMS requirements, and voluntary reporting programs.
“In recent years, the FAA has successfully accommodated a tremendous growth in drone operations and commercial space launches, and is actively preparing for the certification and integration of Advanced Air Mobility aircraft,” the agency says.
Within the commercial context, it is also working to scale availability, production and use of sustainable aviation fuels.
“We are continuing to evolve our proactive and predictive safety oversight system, which has led to the safest period in world transportation history,” the FAA sums up. “We are expanding our portfolio of data collection and analytics tools, and improving our sharing of safety data within the FAA and with industry stakeholders and international partners.”
Author: John Walton
Published: 5th January 2023
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