The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has announced a new joint initiative with industry to produce a set of standardised Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) safety measures. FDM aims to improve safety through an analysis of information downloaded from an aircraft’s on-board computer at the end of every flight. This information can be used to identify trends and discover issues that might develop into a serious safety problem.

The new initiative concentrates on several of the CAA’s ‘Significant Seven’ safety concerns for large UK commercial air transport aeroplanes as identified by a systematic analysis of global fatal accidents and UK high-risk occurrences. The Significant Seven include issues such as runway excursions; controlled flight into terrain and loss of control.

The CAA will be working closely with an established FDM system developer and a significant UK operator on the project. The focus of the scheme will be on developing a method to use FDM to monitor precursors to runway excursion incidents, which will lead to a short trial and then a report on its practicality and effectiveness. If successful a generic specification will be produced that can be applied by other FDM developers.

It is anticipated the remaining Significant Seven safety issues that can be effectively monitored through FDM will be pursued with similar arrangements with other UK based FDM system developers and UK airlines. The CAA said it hoped the various components developed by participants will be adopted by all UK FDM programmes and thereby influence the wider use of these techniques within safety management systems.