February 2006

CAST/ICAO Common Taxonomy Team - An international safety partnership

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) have jointly chartered the CAST/ICAO Common Taxonomy Team (CICTT). The CICTT includes experts from air carriers, manufacturers, pilot associations, regulators, and safety boards. ICAO, Canada, the European Union, France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the United States are represented. CICTT is co-chaired by representatives from ICAO and CAST (a government - industry cooperative effort within FAA's Safer Skies program). The goal of CAST is to reduce the risk of fatal accidents by 80% by 2007.

The CICTT is charged with developing common taxonomies for aviation accident and incident reporting systems. Common taxonomies establish a standard industry language thereby improving the quality of information and communication amongst all parties. Using common taxonomies also allows groups such as CAST to develop a more accurate event count and facilitates the metrics to determine the success of a safety program. The CICTT taxonomy may be used in place of, or in addition to, the database owner's current taxonomy. It is not expected that owners of existing databases will replace their current structures or change data, but there may be scope for such owners to adopt the target taxonomies in addition to their own to facilitate information sharing. The CICTT has developed clear and unambiguous definitions that describe individual components of the taxonomy to help organisations make the transition. This common taxonomy can be implemented when reporting systems are designed or updated.

One benefit of developing and using the common taxonomies will occur as information is shared across different reporting systems and organisations. In particular, where ICAO has a role in collecting data from States, it will streamline the data entry process if information received from each State is supplied using common definitions. In addition to ICAO, the European Coordination Centre for Aviation Incident Reporting Systems (ECCAIRS), has adopted the definitions. ECCAIRS was set up to integrate data from the occurrence reporting systems of a number of EU countries. Aviation safety database managers and users are urged to visit the CICTT website to review and consider adopting the current definitions.

To date, the team has developed taxonomies for occurrence categories, aircraft make / model / series and phase of flight. The aircraft make / model / series lists, as well as engine make / model / series lists, continue to be developed and refined.

Occurrence categories
The occurrence categories are used to classify accidents and incidents at a high level to permit analysis of the data in support of safety initiatives. Categories, such as CFIT and "loss of control" have been developed specifically for this purpose. An organisation may develop subcategories of occurrences to suit their own needs. An example would be a manufacturer using the CICTT category of CFIT and using sub categories to record whether an aircraft was put into service before or after a particular GPWS/EGPWS software load.

Aircraft make / model / series
The purpose of an aircraft master model list is to create a grouping of similar aircraft models for analytical purposes and to identify models that share airworthiness properties. The master model is derived by combining the original aircraft make (DOUGLAS) and aircraft model (DC-3), creating (DOUGLAS-DC3). Current users of the aircraft make / model / series data identified a need to group related aircraft models. Users described situations in which two or more aircraft are related, but it is not evident to someone without a comprehensive knowledge of those aircraft. Military forces can have aircraft that are based on a civilian model. Persons who analyse aircraft safety data may wish to review reports of military and non-military operations of the aircraft model. In addition, over time, former military aircraft enter civilian registries and accident/incident databases. For example the Master Model DOUGLAS-DC3 applies to the civilian DOUGLAS-DC3 as well as the military versions: DOUGLAS-C47 and DOUGLAS-R4D.

Phase of flight
Many aviation occurrence reporting systems capture the phase of operation or the phase of flight in which an event occurred, but not all systems use the same criteria for these categories. The list of flight phases developed by the CICTT provides guidance for this classification. The list provides unambiguous definitions of what constitutes each phase of flight. This allows individual organizations to record events in their databases, but facilitates the exchange and comparison of events. By using a common phase of flight taxonomy, organisations can be assured that similar events are being grouped together when looking at trend information.

For more information on the CICTT products or if you wish to become involved in the process, you can visit the CAST/ICAO Common Taxonomy Team Web site or contact Corey Stephens (CICCT CAST co-chair).

This article was kindly written by Corey Stephens, CAST CICTT Co-Chair & Staff Engineer, Engineering & Air Safety Department, Air Line Pilots Association, Intl

EASA CS and JAR

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is an agency of the European Union created in 2002 by a regulation of the European Parliament and Council of the EU. It came into being in September 2003 and was tasked with the regulation of civil aviation safety in the states of the European Union. Its mission is to promote the highest common standards of safety and environmental protection in civil aviation for a safe and sustainable aviation system.

Previously, safety regulation was the responsibility of the aviation authorities of individual countries but was coordinated by the activities of the Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) who developed the Joint Airworthiness Requirements (JARs) in the fields of aircraft design, manufacture, aircraft operation and maintenance and the licensing of aviation personnel.

Currently, in 2006, apart from the fields of aircraft operations and licensing, the responsibility has devolved to EASA. Consequently the regulations have been redrafted into a new format, and the framework of these regulations has been made available: Regulation organisational structure.

The regulations that were often loosely referred to as "design requirements" or "airworthiness codes", such as JAR-25 for large transport aeroplanes, have essentially remained unchanged in technical content in the transition to EASA Certification Specifications (CSs). Thus JAR-25 has been replaced by CS-25 with paragraph numbers remaining the same. However the advisory material that was contained in a series of advisory circulars (ACJs), is now placed in Part 2 of the CSs as Acceptable Means of Compliance (AMC), again retaining the paragraph numbers for ease of cross reference.

The CS system has now been in existence long enough for amendments to be created. These are established via a process of proposal, using NPAs (Notice of Proposed Amendment), and consultation and comment through CRDs (Comment Response Documents).

This article was kindly written by Professor John Bristow and Cathy Carr of Cranfield University. John Bristow is a visiting professor with the School of Industrial and Manufacturing Science and the instigator and course adviser to the recently launched part-time MSc in Airworthiness. Cathy Carr is the Information Specialist for aerospace, engineering and the environment in the Kings Norton Library.

Keeping up to date in your field using Weblogs

A Weblog, more commonly known as a blog, is a Web-based diary / journal that can be produced by either one author or a select group of contributors. Entries are posted regularly and appear in reverse chronological order. The purpose of the most useful blogs is to keep up to date with developments in a particular field or to report on a specific event. Once an entry has been posted, there is usually a facility for readers to comment on it, which can encourage interesting debate and enable the author to interact with their audience.

Political and news blogs became very popular in 2003 as a result of mass interest in the Iraq War. "Milblogs", created by soldiers serving in the War, gave readers a new perspective on the realities of war, and often offered differing viewpoints from those of official news sources, as did blogs written by Iraqi citizens. More recently, in November 2005, the White House were forced to admit that US troops had used white phosphorus as a weapon in Falluja, despite previous denials, after bloggers discovered an incontrovertible journal article that stated they had, and exposed the truth.

Anyone can set up their own blog, so you need to be sure that you can trust the contents of the blogs you are reading or citing. Bear in mind the following quality issues:

• Who has written them?
• What are their motivations for producing them?
• How often are they updated?
• How reliable are they?

Examples of blogs

The Counterterrorism Blog

The Counterterrorism Blog provides a means of keeping up to date with the current news and the latest developments in this field, as well as enabling access to discussions of long term trends and a calendar of forthcoming events and seminars. It is updated almost daily and invites participation from serious researchers and policymakers. It was founded in November 2005 by Andrew Cochran, the Vice President of GAGE, a business consulting and government affairs company, who advises clients on terrorism and homeland security. Discussions are either initiated by him, or by one of his selected group of contributing experts, and biographies are available for each of them.

Aviation Law Discussions

This blog provides a means of keeping up to date with the current news and the latest developments in the areas of aviation law, safety and security. It was created in 2003 by Reigel and Associates, Aero Legal Services based in Hopkins, Minnesota and is regularly updated.

Finding blogs

Blogs are included in the databases of all of the main search engines so you will come across them naturally in your search results. However, if you do want to search for blogs covering a particular issue or subject, you can try one of the following methods:

Searching -

• Use a general search engine, such as Google, and search for weblog <subject area of interest>
• Use a blog specific search engine such as Google Blog Search, Daypop or Blogstreet

Browsing -

• Use the Weblogs category in the Yahoo! Directory
• Use a blog-specific directory such as Globe of Blogs

If you find some good ones, please let us know using the Suggest a site page and we will include them in AERADE.

Recent AERADE news features

You may have noticed the news feature at the bottom of the AERADE home page. We aim keep it continually updated with links to major news stories and to significant reports that have recently been published in the fields of aerospace and defence. In case you missed them, we are repeating some of the main news we have featured in the past quarter.

Air passenger rights in the European Union

The European Court of Justice confirms legality of EU rules:
Judgment of the Court of 10/01/2006

Ministry of Defence: Major projects report 2005

The National Audit Office’s annual report on the top 20 defence equipment projects shows that, in the last year, the forecast cost has actually decreased by £700 million but on average each project has been delayed by two and a half months:
Major projects report 2005

New missions for the European agency for aviation safety

The European Commission has adopted a major proposal to extend the tasks of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to rulemaking and control in the field of air operations, qualifications and licences of pilots, and oversight of third country airlines operating in the European Union:
Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions

Airport capacity, efficiency and safety in Europe

The services of the Commission are launching a public consultation on Airport capacity, efficiency and safety in Europe. The Commission services would like to ask stakeholders to give their opinion on the issues and ideas presented in this Consultation Paper. After each section there is a box with concrete question which the Commission service kindly requests the stakeholders to answer. Written replies to this consultation should be sent by e-mail or normal mail to the Commission services by 30 November 2005.

Civil Aviation Authority inquiry

The remit, structure and powers of the CAA are going through a period of substantial transition. The SBAC has prepared a consultation paper for submission to the House of Commons Inquiry into the remit and work of the Civil Aviation Authority. Many of the functions that the CAA has traditionally been responsible for have been transferred to the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). In light of this changing role it is appropriate that a formal mechanism is developed for industry to feed its views directly to UK representatives at the Department of Transport. For full details see:
Inquiry into the remit and work of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)

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