ATSB Report: Emerging trends in Australian aviation safety: July to December 2014

[Philip Argy]

This report summarises significant trends in Australian aviation from July to December 2014, and resultant safety action being taken to address these trends.

When aviation safety incidents and accidents happen, they are reported to the ATSB. The most serious of these are investigated, but most reports are used to help the ATSB build a picture of how prevalent certain types of occurrences are in different types of aviation operations.

The ATSB uses this data to look for emerging safety trends. By monitoring trends, issues of concern can be communicated and action taken to prevent accidents.

Safety message:
The ATSB reviews all occurrences to see if there are subtle changes that may point to a larger issue. Potential issues are then monitored by the ATSB, and shared with industry and other government agencies. Proactive safety actions can then be taken by the most appropriate people to prevent these issues resulting in accidents. These trends can also point to the need for the ATSB to target particular types of occurrences for investigation.


ATSB report: Emerging trends in Australian aviation safety: July to December 2014 (http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2015/ar-2015-021.aspx)

[Philip Argy]

Significant trend noted:


All eight of the navaid occurrences in high capacity operations in the last two quarters involved occurrences on approach to Sydney aerodrome. All eight also involved the same operator and aircraft type (Boeing 737). Seven of the eight occurred on approach to runways 16L and 16R, with the other on runway 07. All of the occurrences were during a GNSS Landing System (GLS) approach and describe a loss of GLS guidance on the aircraft. The GLS is an ILS replacement technology currently installed only at Sydney and previously trialled by one operator only but is now available to all GLS equipped operators. At least six of the eight GLS failures occurred in visual meteorological conditions (VMC) – in two occurrences the flight conditions were not reported.