Flight operations safety standards
The primary “Lesson Learned” from any safety investigation is that the best way to prevent accidents is to improve human performance. It is essential for everyone to continue to emphasize the old, but too easily forgotten, solutions:
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Diligent adherence to Standard Operating Procedures.
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Absolute importance of good cockpit discipline.
Failure to exercise these fundamentals still remains the prevalent factor in all accidents and modern technology has done nothing to mitigate that fact.
A Flight Operations Monitoring system, which respects strict anonymity and confidentiality in use of the data, is an essential point in enhancing the safety standards of your operation.
Economic aspects
Few organizations can come through the economic consequences of an accident or significant incident without damage. The simplest way to reduce these costs is to proactively manage flight safety risks by operating a FOM system.
There are two types of costs associated with an accident or incident.
Direct costs: Mostly relate to physical damage, and include replacing or compensating for injuries, aircraft equipment and property damage.
Indirect costs: Are usually higher than direct costs, but are not as obvious and are often delayed. Even a minor incident will incur indirect costs like: loss of business and damage to reputation; legal and damages claims; increased insurance premiums; aircraft recovery and clean up; loss of use of equipment.
Marketing advantages
A good safety reputation can contribute to profitability and business expansion. Improved safety practices go hand-in-hand with good performance in a Safety audit.
Getting to grips with FOM WHAT IS FOM ?
Internal process and communication
A properly designed FOM System enhances good communication between management, flight operations and maintenance. This improves productivity, because valuable and unbiased information can be shared and used to improve training, procedures, or commercial aspects of operations (e.g. fuel consumption, payload).
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Flight Data Monitoring
Flight-Data Recorders (FDRs) use can be traced back to wartime in the early 1940s, and were
legally required on civil airliners as "crash recorders" for accident investigation in the 1960s.
Early FDRs recorded the basic parameters required by the mandatory crash recorder: Airspeed,
Pressure Altitude, Magnetic Heading, Vertical Acceleration and Pitch Attitude.
These parameters were recorded at intervals between .2 and 1 second, on a metal wire that
was stored around a drum.
