Holistic Approach to Airport Surface Safety

Airport surface safety is acknowledged worldwide as a key area to aviation safety. However, current methods for analyzing and mitigating surface safety occurrences are piecemeal in their approach and limited in scope and perspective. This paper emphasizes the need for a holistic approach to surface safety and introduces a new methodology for the development of a holistic taxonomy for critical factors underlying airport surface safety occurrences. The taxonomy incorporates findings from the relevant literature, safety data, airport surveys, and interviews with subject matter experts. It benefits from the viewpoints of all the relevant aviation stakeholders (regulators, air navigation service providers, airport authorities, airlines, ground handling companies, accident investigation boards) and derives its robustness from the combination of a number of research methods. The application of the taxonomy to support the safety risk management function within the context of safety management systems is proposed. Application of the taxonomy to a multinational data set (North America, Europe, Oceania) verifies that the databases complement each other and that a holistic picture can only be achieved through their combined use. In addition, the analysis indicates that differences in the data sets are a function of the national air traffic system and airport infrastructure, underlying regulations, reporting system and safety culture, and the viewpoint of the aviation stakeholder that is represented. Finally, the holistic approach proposed in this paper is shown to be transferable to other areas of aviation safety.