New Safety Reporting Form

We recently introduced a new safety form to enable pilots within our ATO to submit occurrence reports electronically. Following feedback, we have now expanded this to allow any user of the airport to submit an occurrence report to the Blackbushe Safety Management System.

You can use this new form to submit:

• Mandatory Occurrence Reports (MORs) - although these must also be submitted using the ECCAIRS portal to the CAA

• Voluntary Occurrence Reports (VORs) - for anything else on aerodrome which is not an MOR

• Airprox, Birdstrike, Wake Turbulence - these must also be submitted as an MOR or via the relevant CAA form.

WHAT HAPPENS TO OCCURRENCE REPORTS?

Blackbushe has between 400-600 reports each year. We use our occurrence reporting system for everything on airport, from incidents such as aircraft accidents, down to smaller things like trips / falls, or aircraft failing to squawk 7010!

Occurrences are reviewed and assessed by our safety team. Most are closed on receipt, they are logged for statistical purposes or trend monitoring, but do not give rise to any further investigation.

Some will have a low level response, we might choose to send a reminder email to the airport community, or issue a notice to our staff to highlight an issue, and avoid a re-occurrence.

For example, we log each time an aircraft does not squawk 7010, but we are looking at:

• Which runway we were using

• Whether it was on departure or rejoin

• Whether the FISO reminded the pilot to set 7010

This helps us identify if we need to focus on reminding pilots, or whether we need to refine our terminology or improve signage at the holds.

For a few, we will do a more comprehensive safety investigation - we’re required to do so for any Airprox or Airspace Infringement for example. We might ask you to use this form to submit your account of the occurrence to help us with this investigation.

OCCURRENCE INVESTIGATIONS

When we investigate occurrences, we are trying to establish if there is anything we (the airport) could have done differently, or anything we can do in the future to prevent a re-occurrence.

We will often ask for pilot reports in these circumstances to provide another perspective on the occurrence. In the past, pilot statements have helped us refine procedures to make them clearer to pilots, or to make changes to the way we operate to avoid unforeseen consequences.

We do not have any desire or authority to ‘punish’ pilots. Reports are used with the sole purpose of improving operations at Blackbushe for all, learning from each other’s mistakes.

Investigations are kept internally, but may be provided to other airport users in an anonymised form in the interest of improving safety at the airport. Our safety reports and data are available to the CAA when the audit us annually.

Where we are required to conduct a full unit investigation for a MOR such as an Airprox or Airspace Infringement, your account may be included in our report when submitted to the CAA.

REPORTING FORM

The new reporting form is located at www.blackbushe.com/report. We encourage you to use it next time you identify an issue on the airport.

Thank you in advance for engaging with the Blackbushe Airport Safety Management System. Your report can prevent someone else’s accident.

If you have any questions, please contact us.