Aviation Safety Reporting System

The Aviation Safety Reporting System, or ASRS, is a voluntary system that allows pilots and other airplane crew members to confidentially report near misses and close calls in the interest of improving air safety. The confidential and independent nature of the ASRS is key to its success, since reporters do not have to worry about any possible negative consequences of coming forward with safety problems. The ASRS is run by NASA, a neutral party, since it has no power in enforcement. The success of the system serves as a positive example that is often used as a model by other industries seeking to make improvements in safety.

Reporting Process

A notable feature of the ASRS is its confidentiality and immunity policy. Reporters are required to submit their name and contact information. If the ASRS staff has questions regarding a report, it can perform a "callback" and request further information or clarification from the reporter. Once the staff is satisfied with the information received, the report is stripped of identifying information and assigned a report number. The part of the reporting form with contact information is detached returned to the reporter, along with the report number. ASRS will issue "alerts" to relevant parties, such as airlines and air traffic controllers, if it feels it is necessary to improve safety. The ASRS also publishes a monthly newsletter highlighting safety issues, as well as allow researchers access to its database of reports.

Immunity Policy

Often, reports are submitted because a rule was accidentally broken. The FAA's immunity policy encourages submission of all safety incidents and observations, especially information that could prevent a major accident. If enforcement action is taken by the FAA against an accidental rule violation that did not result in an accident, a reporter can present their ASRS form as proof that the incident was reported. The FAA views the report as evidence of a "constructive safety attitude" and will not impose a penalty [http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/briefing/br_6.htm] . Immunity can be exercised once every five years, though an unlimited number of reports can be filed.

tatistical Validity

Due to the self-selected nature of the reports to the ASRS, NASA cautions against statistical use of the data they contain. On the other hand, they do express considerable confidence in the reliability of the reports submitted:

Quote|All ASRS reports arevoluntarily submitted, and thus cannot be considered a measured random sample of thefull population of like events. For example, we receive several thousand altitudedeviation reports each year. This number may comprise over half of all the altitudedeviations that occur, or it may be just a small fraction of total occurrences. …One thing that can be known from ASRS statistics is that they represent the lowermeasure of the true number of such events that are occurring. For example, if ASRSreceives 881 reports of track deviations in 1999 (this number is purely hypothetical), thenit can be known with some certainty that at least 881 such events have occurred in 1999.|NASA| [http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/report_sets/ped.pdf ASRS Report Set, Passenger Electronic Devices]

External links

* [http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/ Official Site]
* [http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/publications/callback.html Callback Newsletter]
* [http://www.37000feet.com/ 37000 Feet - Browse and search Aviation Safety Reporting System database]