Ramp-Up Challenges – July 2022

Are You Discussing What the Current Ramp-up Challenges Mean for Your Organisation? EASA has issued a new Safety Information Bulletin (SIB) on the risks of the continued Ramp-up to go with all the material published in June as part of the Stronger, Safer, Together Campaign.

TLDR - The short version with the key info if you have no time right now

• Access the latest EASA SIB here. 
• Access the material from the Stronger, Safer, Together Campaign here. 
• The key actions you need to take to ensure safe and effective operations during these challenges are: (this is just a small part of the safety picture of course).
  • Maximise collaboration: With stakeholders you work with, contract with and operate with (airports, airlines, ground handlers, ANSPs etc). 
  • Encourage safety reporting: Understand what is really going in your organisation so that you know the risks you need to be managing. 
  • Fatigue is a key challenge: Commanders discretion should be the exception and not normal activity.

The longer read - what the SIB is all about?

This article will tell you more about this important SIB, link what’s in it to our collaborative Ramp-up Campaign and help you focus your safety efforts for the rest of the summer. You will find specific actions that you should take to help mitigate our risks. When challenging times are upon us, it is vital that you maintain a sharp focus on safety.

If you are not having positive safety conversations with your front line staff, continually, then you are missing out on vital opportunities to ensure safe and effective operations. With our simple example of a recent challenge in something as simple as ironing an outfit for a University Graduation – you will realise the importance of both resources and people on achieving safe outcomes. 

How the SIB links to the 6 principles of safety

While it’s been great to see airports filling up again and load factors increasing, this has brought with it significant challenges. In our Stronger, Safer, Together Campaign for Summer 2022 we have been talking a lot about the safety risks these challenges lead to. With the continued challenges over the early part of the summer, EASA has now issued an SIB to bring further attention to the situation.

The SIB covers different aspects of operations. It focuses a lot on what is happening around the aerodromes and also highlights the challenges that shortages of personnel can have on the fatigue levels of the remaining workforce. Our staff can only work at a high tempo for a short period of time. Working to the full extent of fatigue rules on a continual basis is not a viable way to run any organisation.

This is a great time to highlight again our 6 principles of safety (shown below). These principles help show how all our safety activities are connected. When “People” and/or “Resources” are a stretched, this creates new “Risks” that you need to understand and manage. Just falling back on the basic principle of “Compliance” is not enough by itself. Of course this means you need the right “Mindset” as an organisation so you actively try to “Learn” from what is really happening in your organisation. Hopefully it sounds simpler when put like this. Plus it’s easier to do something about.

There will be a difference between what you think is happening and the reality. Don’t leave your operational staff to figure out that gap on their own and hope for the best. This is where the our practical, real-world example about the simple task of ironing a graduation outfit comes in. John from the Safety Promotion team will explain.

What can ironing a graduation outfit teach us about the current safety challenges in aviation?

In the past couple of weeks, our daughter finally got to have her university graduation that was delayed from 2022. Thankfully she still lives in the city where she went to university but she lives in a small flat so the rest of the family stayed in a hotel nearby. On the day of the graduation we started getting ready for the graduation ceremony at the hotel. This meant there were clothes to be ironed so we all looked nice for this special day. My 23 year old daughter set about the task in hand.

So here was the problem. The hotel chain had chosen to purchase the worst ironing board in the world. All we had was a metal board with a wafer thin piece of material. No clothes were going to look nice being ironed on that. So here we have a “Resource” problem that made it difficult to complete the task in hand.

We also had a “People” challenge as well. Unsurprisingly, ironing is not a skill that my daughter has much experience of. Thankfully, having previously served in the military and being through lots of training that involved making uniforms look nice with nothing more than an iron, a blanket and a table, I was able to use my experience to help solve the problem in hand.

The challenge is that your staff will be dealing with sub-optimal situations like this all the time. The question is what do you do to learn about these differences between work as you think it’s done and the reality. This is where you need the right “Mindset” that encourages reporting and continual safety conversations as part of day-to-day work. The key points to consider are these:

• What does not having enough staff mean for your operations? And how do their experience levels impact their ability to perform their role.
• How might this be further impacted by the resources they are using?
• Do you have the right Mindset as an organisation so that your staff can report hazards to safe operations?

Fatigue and a continually high tempo of operations with reduced staffing

When you combine the rapid Ramp-up of operations with staff shortages, the result is that the staff who are available end up working far harder than perhaps they should. This is why the SIB has a big focus on the challenges of fatigue and flight time limitations (FTL).

With such a tough operational situation it might seem natural to maximise the FTL rules or other shift patterns for staff this doesn't apply to. However, when you trade this "Comply" box in our safety principles, this creates additional "Risks" and always challenges your "People". At an individual level, you need to remember that staff have been through a tough 2 years. They don't have the energy to run another marathon until the summer season finishes. 

So what does this mean in terms of fatigue?

When it comes to managing the fatigue of operational staff this means that its not enough to just apply the rules to the basic schedules of your operation. Reality has to come into play here - this means: 

• Taking into account the operational disruptions at aerodromes with known high proportion of delay issues. Such as the time needed for crew security checks, taxiing, longer turnaround times.
• Commander’s discretion is exceptional. Extension of flight duty period when operating to and from aerodromes with a known high proportion of delays to traffic should be kept to a minimum since this delay cannot be considered as ‘unforseen circumstances’.
• Additionally, any crew scheduling, which includes the commander’s discretion is not acceptable and the planning with extensions should be limited. Commander’s discretion should be avoided at homebase and/or your operational hub where standby or reserve crew members should be available.

The importance of collaboration

It is easy to focus on your organisation and what you are trying to achieve. Especially when things are as challenging as they are right now. However, unless we work together we can't make the most of the resources at our disposal. Work closely with each other. Whether that's airports, airlines, ground handling service providers, security services providers or state agencies.

When it comes to managing risks and collaborative decision making, the more stakeholders involved the better. Work together to identify any emerging operational or capacity issues due to staff shortages and then implement actions to mitigate these issues. Use existing mechanisms like your Local Runway Safety Teams, Airport Security and/or Facilitation Committees and Apron Safety Committees. Increase their collaboration and monitoring. 

Finally - Reporting and collaboration with staff

As mentioned earlier, staff should be able to report occurrences safely in the knowledge (and expectation) that it will help manage the risks in your organisation. The current challenges make the need for reporting and positive safety conversations more important than ever. 

Create the "Mindset" that reporting is a good thing. Ask your staff to report, so you learn what is actually happening on a day-to-day basis. Then "Learn" from what information you receive, investigate effectively and act to reduce risks. 

Finally, finally - communicate continually. If your staff don't know what is happening with the information they tell you, they will quickly stop reporting. 

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