Regional Aviation Safety Group - Pan America (RASG-PA)
The Regional Aviation Safety Group – Pan-American (RASG-PA) represents the first effort of its kind in the world aviation to analyze and develop strategies to mitigate risks to civil aviation operational safety. The Group was established in 2008 and, since its creation, ANAC actively participates in coordination activities and group management, whose current goal is to reduce the fatalities risk for commercial aviation regular operations.
ANAC acts as coordinator in RASG-PA Executive Committee and as co-chair of Pan-American Regional Aviation Safety Team (PA-RAST), the subgroup responsible for elaborating risk mitigation initiatives. RASG-PA was formally recognized by ICAO and is now a fundamental part of the Global Aviation Safety Plan, ICAO’s high-level operational safety policy. Its composition includes representatives from industry (aircraft manufacturers, airlines), American continent States and International Organizations such as IATA, CANSO, Flight Safety Foundation, IFATCA, IFALPA, among others. Brazil, through ANAC, led the work of revising RASG-PA Strategic Plan and Communication Plan, as well as has coordinated technical meetings for accident mitigation initiatives elaboration.
The history of RASG-PA
In 2005, ICAO initiated a major revision of the Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP), the first edition of which was published in 1997. One of the conclusions of the group that promoted GASP revision was the need to create regional groups to promote the advances in operational safety foreseen in the Global Aviation Safety Roadmap (GASR). These groups would be composed of civil aviation authorities, regional multinational organizations and industry representatives, with support from the respective ICAO regional offices.
From the second semester of 2008, the ICAO regional offices for North America, Central America and the Caribbean (ICAO-NACC) and for South America (ICAO-Lima) concluded their efforts to implement a Pan-American group and held, from November 10th to 14th, 2008, the first meeting of the Regional Aviation Safety Group – Pan-American (RASG-PA), in which its Terms of Reference and administrative structures were approved, and the work agenda for the following years was defined.
The activities developed produce objective initiatives for civil aviation safety improvement, focusing on the four areas that most cause accidents in commercial aviation, such as Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT), Loss of Control In Flight (LOC-I), Runway Excursion (RE), and Mid-Air Collision (MAC), according to statistical data and action line recommended by GASP. These initiatives are developed after data analysis from companies operations in the region and the identification of “hot-spots” (or attention points with a higher collision or runway incursion history), which guide mitigating actions prioritization.
The safety initiatives developed by RASG-PA encompass three fronts for risk mitigation strategy: training (largely provided by the industry), aeronautical products (aircraft design solutions and on-board systems) and regulation (action focus of the States, with their respective civil aviation authorities, and IATA). Much of the work already developed under the RASG-PA has been based almost exclusively on CAST (Commercial Aviation Safety Team), which is an older US initiative with similar structure and objectives.
In order to mitigate and control the risk level exposure in these areas, RASG-PA has developed, from its observations and monitoring, a knowledge dissemination and exchange program as part of its actions. Within this program, seminars and meetings among its members and other events to civil aviation community are planned.