Consistent and up-to-date aviation safety targets

There is a need for consistency between aviation safety targets – target levels of safety (TLS). Consistent ‘risk philosophy’ ensures that resources can be allocated in areas where they will be most beneficial in reducing the number of potential accidents and fatalities. Many existing aviation targets were devised decades ago, have not been brought up to date to take account of the considerable improvement in the sector’s safety performance, and are not targeted at some specific future year. It appears feasible to construct consistent and up-to-date sets of TLSs covering the full range of aviation needs, in particular for air traffic management. However, this requires significant, more demanding, changes to some TLS values. One caveat to note is that the safety of ‘loosely coupled’ aviation systems may be better described and managed by the Health and Safety Executive version of risk assessment rather than by a TLS approach.