About IORS

The Internal Occurrence Reporting System is the system that the Agency uses to process all safety related occurrences reported to EASA.
In general, IORS brings no changes to obligations and responsibilities of reporting entities/organisations (e.g. certificate or approval holders) and the Member States (National Aviation Authorities (NAA)). They retain the same responsibilities to act and make follow-up actions on occurrences as before.
As there is no change in the legislation due to the introduction of the IORS, there is no change in the scope of occurrences that shall be reported to the Agency.

However, there have been some technical changes in the manner in which reports are delivered to the Agency. Basically, these changes have involved the establishment of data bridges for top reporting organisations and a new reporting form (IORS Form) replacing Form 44 for the rest of reporting entities and NAAs.

IORS includes:

• A policy in particular relative to Access, Dissemination and Data Protection:
• Without prejudice to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 and of Article 15 of Regulation (EC) No 216/2008, the Agency commits itself to the highest possible level of confidentiality that the legal framework allows for all IORS Occurrence Data and other related documents. Refer to Data protection for more details.
• Defined Roles and Responsibilities for staff involved
• A set of solutions for organisations to report to EASA
• An EASA occurrence data repository
• IT Tools: ECCAIRS tool, IORS Work Flow Tool
• Resources

Objectives:

• To store all occurrences received by EASA in a central database, using the ECCAIRS 5 format.

• To establish a closed-loop workflow for design related occurrences (and also for other types of occurrences, when necessary).
• To provide concerned EASA staff and EASA Product Certification Managers at National Aviation Authorities with access to the database.

• To establish the IORS management system including working procedures, reporting guidelines and related definitions.

IORS will bring a variety of benefits with respect to occurrence handling within the Agency. The expected benefits are:

• Staff will be able to conduct simple queries and easily verify the status of occurrences;

• A tool for tracking and filing of assessments and conclusions drawn from occurrence reports;
• Comprehensive source of data for various types of safety analysis, trend monitoring, etc;

• Project Certification Managers (PCMs)/Experts can check in-service data for their products independently from a Type Certificate (TC) holder and may access in-service data on other products;
• The filtering and ‘closed upon receipt’ IORS functions will ease the work with occurrences for Project Certification Managers (PCMs), Organisation Approval Team Leaders (OA TLs) and experts.

• It is not the intent to affect the responsibilities of certificate holders and the responsibilities of Member States.

 

The Internal Occurrence Reporting System at a glance. Please note that the inter-organisation reporting flows are not depicted on the picture.

Acronyms:

BA – Bilateral Agreements
ECR – The European Central Repository
ICAO An8 – Annex 8 to the ICAO Convention
IORS – Internal Occurrence reporting System
NAA – National Aviation Authority
WA – Working Arrangements

The note on the IORS – ECR relationship: IORS may have access to the ECR by virtue of article 19 of Commission Regulation (EU) No 996/2010. In the future IORS may be required to integrate occurrences into the ECR.
Legal framework for reporting to EASA:

• Commission Regulation (EU) No 216/2008
• Commission Regulation (EU) No 748/2012 [replacing Commission Regulation (EU) No 1702/2003 (Part 21)), Commission Regulation (EU) No 2042/2003 (Part 145, Part M) – transposing ICAO Annex 8 standards and recommended practices related to reporting,
• Acceptable Means of Compliance AMC 20-8
• Bilateral Agreements/Working Arrangements  

Texts of interest for occurrence reporting:

Other reporting obligations exist (not for reporting to EASA) like Directive 2003/42, implemented by Regulation 1321/2007 and Regulation 1330/2007. According to Regulation 996/2010 EASA is entitled to access that information.
Notifying accidents and serious incidents:

Regulation 996/2010 states obligations to notify accidents and incidents to EASA (transposing ICAO Annex 13 standards and recommended practices related to notification).

The IORS management system:

The IORS management system is established via Internal Occurrence Reporting System policy and it defines the roles and main tasks within the Internal Occurrence Reporting System for the IORS Department, Certification, Approvals & Standardisation, Rulemaking Directorates, and the Information Services Department.

 

 

Acronyms:

IORS – Internal Occurrence Reporting System of the Agency
TA –Technical Advisor
TI –Technical Informee
TO –Technical Owner
FP – IORS Focal Point
The monitoring and coordination of the IORS operations is performed by the IORS Committee, which is established based on the Decision No 2010/16/E of the Executive Director of the Agency and it consists of representatives from the IORS department and focal points from involved Directorates.