A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (SMS) IN AVIATION WITH A FOCUS ON THE SAFETY LEVEL

Safety is generally characterised as the state of being “safe”, the condition of being protected from harm or other non-desirable consequences. One effective way of achieving it is to implement a safety management system (SMS). SMS should be seen as an aggregate strategic aspect of standard business management, understanding its high priority to safety. This article describes and illustrates SMS in aviation, focusing on the similarities and differences in the system approaches adopted by selected Civil Aviation Authorities (CAAs) with the primary focus on the safety level. The main goal is to provide a structural comparison of the system framework within individual CAAs and its explanation in safety-related documents. This article also dealt with the chosen safety approach (reactive, proactive and predictive) and safety performance indicators (SPIs), forming a quality and effective safety system that maintains an acceptable safety level. Finally, this article is mainly based on datasets publicly available through the International Civil Aviation Organisation, Transport Canada, Civil Aviation Safety Authority Australia, Federal Aviation Administration, UK Civil Aviation Authority, Civil Aviation Administration of China and Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand websites and documentation related to safety.

An account of low level wind shear over Chennai airport - Part II : Turbulence and eddy dissipation

In-flight reports on Low Level Wind Shear (LLWS) received from aircrafts are used to issue wind shear alerts for all subsequent landing aircrafts as per standing guidelines of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). In this paper, winds reported by aircrafts at 1000 and 1800 ft. are used to validate the wind estimated from DWR measured radial wind data employing standard algorithms. Turbulence indices and parameters have been computed independently using conventional (RS/RW) upper air data, aircraft measured winds and DWR estimated winds and compared these with wind shear induced turbulence reported by aircrews. Mean power law (wind escalation law) profiles in the boundary layer have been arrived at for unstable and stable atmospheric conditions. Three dimensional shear (3DS) upto 600 m a.g.l. has been worked out from DWR measured radial velocity data and compared with wind shear computed from RS/RW and aircraft measured winds and DWR estimated winds. It is found that 3DS values of more than 16 * 10-3 s-1 predict well the occurrence of moderate turbulence. Contrary to the general belief that wind shear is a short lived phenomenon which may last for a few minutes only, it has been observed that incidences of LLWS and induced moderate turbulence lasting more than 10 hrs are not at all uncommon over Chennai aircraft.

Commercial Human Spaceflights: Legal Challenges for International Regulation

Commercial Human Spaceflight – a new addition to the commercial activities in outer space – is attracting the ultra-rich section of the society. It has enormous potential to accelerate the economic aspect of commercial spaceflight since with the development of reusable technologies it is expected to become cheaper. At the same time, it poses a severe threat in various ways to the status quo of the existing regime of space regulation. Taking humans to outer space as a passenger affects the current social, psychological, political, and legal setup. The paper highlights the legal issues that are arising from commercial human spaceflights. Therefore, in section one, the article discusses applicable international law to this emerging activities. Part two details specifically on the international space law that is relevant to regulate these activities. After analyzing the existing international law on space activities in sections one and two, which are essential for the commercial human spaceflights, part three identifies several legal challenges that are not sufficiently addressed by the existing laws. Section four examines the role played by the regulatory organization to develop the space law, and the role of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has been discussed in detail. As the ICAO holds good experience in handling air transportation, many believe that the ICAO is naturally well placed to regulate commercial space transportation. This aspect has been elaborated in detail in this part. In the fifth, i.e. the last section, the authors conclude by arguing to develop a new international convention to regulate it.

An expert system framework to support aircraft accident and incident investigations

ABSTRACT The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) audits its Member States for safety oversight and monitors its Effective Implementation (EI). The global average EI was 68.83% in 2019, with 46% audited Member States achieving 75% EI (2022 target); however, an ICAO (2016 – 2018) audit highlighted six Annex 13 non-compliance issues. One issue was that more than 60% of Member States do not have a comprehensive and detailed investigator training program, contributing to many shortcomings that include a lack of essential and volatile evidence preservation, investigation management, investigation reporting and/or safety recommendations. This paper proposes an Expert System that captures knowledge in aircraft accident investigation generated over many years and allows aircraft investigators to share, access and interrogate accumulated knowledge to support the aircraft accident investigation process. The Expert System will improve the evidence analysing timeline, conclusion consistency and accuracy and support the on-the-job “field” training of evidence analysis through self-discovery.

Appellate Jurisdiction of International Court of Justice: Old Wine in New Bottle

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the principal judicial organ under the United Nations (UN) competent to decide cases submitted by the States. The Jurisdiction of the ICJ is derived from Article 36 of the ICJ statute; further, the ICJ is competent to render advisory opinions when requested by the organs and specialised agencies of the UN. Before proceeding to the merits of the case, the ICJ has to satisfy that it has jurisdiction to decide upon the case. Moreover, the decisions of the ICJ are binding without appeal, except in cases involving revision. This article briefly analyses the Appeal Relating to the Jurisdiction of the International Civil Aviation Organisation Council (ICAO Council) under Article 84 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates v. Qatar).

Implementation of a new RWY reporting system and snowtam format in slovak republic

This paper presents the upcoming changes in the runway reporting format and the newly introduced SNOWTAM format. The aim of the paper is to draw comparisons between the current SNOWTAM format and the updated version applicable as of November 2021. The author analysed information from available documents published by the International Civil Aviation Organisation ICAO, which describe the general conditions adopted to the new runway condition reports formulations. Since the author is enrolled in his pilot training, his objective when writing this final thesis, was to understand the issue of the changes. From this knowledge he can benefit in his future carrier. The paper points out new formats of reports of airport movement areas reporting conditions. As the new reports and techniques of reporting have not been used in real conditions yet, the author based the paper on the ICAO standards and recommended practices, ICAO and EASA guidance material. Introduction of the new methodology is expected to provide a better understanding of reports informing about contamination on movement areas, to ensure more precise aeroplane performance calculations and enhance the safety.

AIR TRANSPORT AND PASSENGER RIGHTS PROTECTION DURING AND AFTER THE CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) PANDEMIC

A pandemic caused by the COVID-19 has caused disorders and enormous damage in all modes of transport. Carriers as well as transport users have faced great challenges of maintaining traffic. Measures and requirements imposed on them were often obscure, imprecise, and the journey itself was uncertain. Passengers were in fear of whether they would be able to reach their destination, but also whether they will succeed in preserving their health. Carriers, on the other hand, have also sought to adapt and provide passengers with safe transport. Nevertheless, the pandemic caused financial collapse of many carriers, landed the world fleet and closed many airports. Various legal instruments related to the protection of public health are applied in air transport, and they have been adopted within the framework of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which will be presented in the paper. Various epidemiological measures related to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic have been prescribed in air transport, applicable during the journey, which have certain specifics in relation to other modes of transport. The paper will present epidemiological measures as well as the procedure applied when there is a passenger on the flight who shows symptoms of an infectious disease, and new procedures related to transport of goods. It will also address the obligation to complete certain forms and provide various information as well as the obligation to compensate costs for cancelled flights. There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has a significant economic impact on air transport, and efforts will be made to present measures and provide forecasts for the recovery of air traffic in the period that follows. The paper will also address the question as to whether existing legislation and measures are appropriate, whether relevant international organisations have taken prompt measures to protect and ensure air transport during the pandemic, and whether sufficient measures have been taken to protect the health of passengers on the flight.

Beijing Convention and Beijing Protocol. Changes in the International and Legal Model for Combatting Aviation Terrorism

The article deals with the issue of the Beijing reform of international criminal aviation law. The author analyses the relevant applicable international law and confronts it with the new legal regulations adopted at the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) conference in Beijing in 2010. As a result, the author states that the basic change involves the expansion of the catalogue of acts subject to criminalisation as well as the expansion of the circle of persons participating in or supporting actions involving the commission of acts that pose a threat to the safety of civil aviation; the system also specifies the responsibility of collective entities (the so-called ‘Al Qaeda’ clause). The author is deeply convinced that the development of the Tokyo-Hague-Montreal-Beijing system, which is part of the whole international legal system of combatting terrorism, including its financing, is fully justified. The new regulations also make this system more coherent. It is also worth adding that the adoption of the Beijing Convention and the Beijing Protocol is part of the implementation of the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy adopted by the United Nations.

Monitoring of Low-Level Wind Shear by Ground-based 3D Lidar for Increased Flight Safety, Protection of Human Lives and Health

Low-level wind shear, i.e., sudden changes in wind speed and/or wind direction up to altitudes of 1600 ft (500 m) above-ground is a hazardous meteorological phenomenon in aviation. It may radically change the aerodynamic circumstances of the flight, particularly during landing and take-off and consequently, it may threaten human lives and the health of passengers, people at the airport and its surrounding areas. The Bratislava Airport, the site of this case study, is one of the few airports worldwide and the first in Central Europe that is equipped with a Doppler lidar system, a perspective remote sensing tool for detecting low-level wind shear. The main objective of this paper was to assess the weather events collected over a period of one year with the occurrences of low-level wind shear situations, such as vertical discontinuities in the wind field, frontal passages and gust fronts to increase the level of flight safety and protect human lives and health. The lidar data were processed by a computer algorithm with the main focus on potential wind shear alerts and microburst alerts, guided by the recommendations of the International Civil Aviation Organisation. In parallel, the selected weather events were analyzed by the nearby located meteorological radar to utilize the strengths of both approaches. Additionally, an evaluation of the lidar capability to scan dynamics of aerosol content above the airport is presented.

Combustors with Low Emission Levels for Aero Gas Turbine Engines

The aircrafts are responsible for emitting several types of pollutants, especially the pollutants in the form of NOX, CO2, CO, UHC, SOX and Particulate Matter PM (smoke/soot). The impact of aviation emissions on the global is well known, where these emissions modify the chemical and microphysical properties of the atmosphere resulting in changes of earth’s climate system, which can ultimate in critical changes in our planet fragile ecosystem, also the pollutants produced by aircraft engines cause many health problems. This is why the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is seriously seeking to control the emission levels by issuing new standards during the successive meetings of the Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection CAEP (CAEP/01 in 1986, CAEP/2, CAEP/4, CAEP/6, CAEP/8, etc). The new regulations include more stringent standards aimed to reduce emission levels, this led to increased interest in low emission technologies. In this paper, a comprehensive review of low emissions combustion technologies for modern aero gas turbines is represented. The current low emission technologies include the high Technologies Readiness Level (TRL) including RQL, TAPS, DAC and LDI. Also, there are advanced technologies at lower TRL including LPP, ASC and VGC.