Preventing, reporting, evaluating, and mitigating Airside accidents and incidents at airports.
Introduction
Safety measures undertaken at the airport are grouped in the following way:
- Steps focusing on Airport Safety in Operations; - Steps focusing on Security against Illicit or Criminal Actions; - Steps assuring Safety and Health in the Workplace; - Steps focusing on Environmental Safety Management.
The areas mentioned above have their own distinct regulations, procedures and practices; however, should an inadequacy present itself in activities or situations of one domain, it would certainly affect the others. The identification of dangers for each area and the evaluation and mitigation of risk for each of the above-stated safety fields can be tracked by using a computer-based Integrated Management System (IMS) whose vision and performance are, at the same time:
- individualised, based on the requirements of each domain; - collective, with each domain’s respective cross-over effects into other domains. This integrated System will compel all sectors in these domains to work together in the task of: - obtaining immediate response to incidents; - controlling the implementation of appropriate corrective measures or actions; - facilitating the revising and updating of manuals, procedures and norms in compliance with the requirements of the company’s duly certified Quality Management System.
In order to tighten the bonds between the Board of Directors of ANA and Airport Directors in matters of airport safety, the Office for Airport Safety was created as part of the Directorate for Technical Services (DSTE). Among the various services under its charge, Air Services Management (GSA) have participated in the elaboration of company-wide Safety Policy and has endorsed: - the creation of an Airport Safety Manual; - the establishment of the Safety Management System – ICAO, Annex 14, Volume I on the corporate level; - the follow-up to implementation of this System in each of its airports. All activities, currently in operation or about to be set in motion, focus on the consolidation of a genuine culture and atmosphere that promotes Airport Safety.
3. Safety Policy
The increase in air traffic has meant that new measures must be put in place to assure that the number of accidents per year does not surpass unacceptable levels. Also, the increase in the number and size of individual aircraft, and their respective movement in airports, has required constant expansion work, which has led to the resizing of infrastructures and even the construction of new buildings. This increase in air traffic also translates into a greater commitment to support services and assistance to passengers and aircraft, which must be dealt with in terms of Flight Services in airports that are increasingly congested with planes and equipment. All of this requires heightened attentiveness to safety and security. Therefore, ever mindful of these concerns, we on the corporate level have been developing initiatives to establish the Safety Management System at each of our airports, stressing the domains of safety assuredness already mentioned, with the Board of Directors of ANA stating the Safety Policy thus:
“ANA, SA seeks to formalise Management Systems for Airport Safety, for Security against Illicit or Criminal Actions and for Safety and Health in the Workplace such that they are implemented in each one of our airports and able to perform to the highest degree, with the goal of reducing to the bare minimum the number of accidents and incidents that may occur in these three safety areas.
ANA, SA is committed to providing the structures and means necessary, be it at the central or airport level, which will allow for the efficient management of Safety issues as a fundamental component of the success of the business of airport operations.
ANA, SA is committed to increasing whatever measures are required for the creation, modification and updating of norms and procedures, of the acquisition of equipment and of various initiatives of sensitivity-training and other types of technical training for the bolstering and improvement of the various domains of safety assuredness in order to display the clear image of responsibility that ANA has assumed for all national airports under its charge.
