LFV chose Synergi Life
Managing air safety can be challenging at a time of rapidly changing regulatory requirements and forecast growth in traffic. To that can be added even stricter environmental standards and goal of increasing safety tenfold.
All these considerations mean that Sweden’s Air Navigation Services (LFV) definitely needs the right tools to manage and assess risks. Safety goals determined by the EU’s Sesar project represent a significant tightening in standards.
Incident reporting
“Incident reporting is mandatory in this business,” says Greger Filipsson, HSE coordinator at LFV. “We have to report all events to the Swedish authorities within 72 hours. This is an important tool, which can help us to uncover the causes of a problem and propose measures to improve safety.”
With more planes both on the runway and in the air, proactive risk management is absolutely essential. Incident reporting is used to improve safety in many industries and is perceived to be a successful tool for reducing future risks. According to Filipsson, such reporting became mandatory in LFV after the airport disaster on the Spanish island of Tenerife in 1977, which still ranks as the worst fatal accident in aviation history with 583 fatalities.
“This event, which involved the collision of two Boeing 747 passenger aircraft on the runway, had a big impact on the industry, particularly where communication and incident reporting are concerned,” explains Filipsson.
“The word ‘takeoff’ was taken out of general use by air traffic controllers, and confined to clearing an aircraft to lift from the runway. Another consequence was changes to international airline regulation and the start of reporting not only accidents, but also incidents, near misses and potential collisions.”
A successful incident reporting software system can be used to pick up failures which might eventually lead to more serious incidents if left undetected. Findings can be collected and analysed in order to identify trends, and they can be shared across national borders.
Risk managment
“Using a risk management tool in everyday work also enhances the general awareness of personnel about the potential for failure, as well as giving us a systematic tool to follow up and make changes,” adds Filipsson. “That minimizes risk.”
LFV issues some 4000 incident reports annually. A hundred of these are minimum separation infringements, which means that planes are flying closer to each other in the airspace than permitted by the regulations.
Given that flight movements total around 900 000 annually, Filipsson does not regard the figure for reports as high. But a safety organisation must always strive towards a goal of zero incidents.
“The Synergi Life - Risk Management software module enables us to be proactive in handling and minimizing risk,” he says. “The ‘who, what and why’ are identified, and we can implement measures to mitigate future risk.
“Management can easily get reports based on defined key performance indicators [KPIs] and the system communicates directly with the authorities, which is a huge advantage. We’re well placed to take on future aviation challenges.”
Why we chose DNV:
- Synergi Life's abilitiy to register far more unexpected incidents and deviations
- The product met our requirements to improve deviation control
This is what we gained:
- Improved reports and statistics
- One single solution handling both reporting of operational and quality deviations
- Helps us identify and administer deviations in a quicker and better manner
LFV IN BRIEF
LFV is a commercial company with a total of 1 400 employees. The company provides air traffic control for civilian and military clients at about 40 locations in Sweden, has an annual turnover of more than SEK 2 billion and is based in Norrköping.
As one of the leading flight safety service operators in Sweden, the company’s solutions for more secure and costeffective operations are closely monitored by international airlines.
