The incident rate in the airspace controlled by ENAIRE has dropped by more than half in the last five years

The rate of severe incidents in ENAIRE-controlled airspace has fallen by more than half in the last five years. The work done by the Operational Safety Committee (COSEGO), created in 2015 at the proposal of ENAIRE’s CEO, Angel Luis Arias, has been vital to reducing the number of incidents.

ENAIRE, Spain’s air navigation service provider, held the 100th meeting of the aforementioned Committee today, which symbolises ENAIRE’s commitment to safety.

Thanks to all the actions that have been implemented by COSEGO and to the day-to-day work of all the units and professionals at ENAIRE to constantly improve safety in the organisation, the Weighted Safety Level shows that the rate of severe incidents fell from 5.14 in 2014 to 1.36 in 2020.

One of the main functions of COSEGO is to track incidents, trends, potential causal factors and performance indicators at ENAIRE involving operational safety. COSEGO does this at the meetings that are held approximately every 15 days, in which a large amount of information is analysed to facilitate decision-making and promote the ongoing improvement of operational safety in Spanish airspace.

All of the units that are directly related to the services provided by ENAIRE are represented at the Committee through its directors, both representatives of the different units grouped by regions and those of ENAIRE’s Central Services, all of which have responsibilities in the field of operational safety.

Similarly, ENAIRE’s Safety Management System is ranked highest among all European service providers (according to the EoSM European indicator, which is evaluated annually by EASA).

ENAIRE’s Operational Safety Committee held its first meeting on 23 July 2015 with the firm purpose of ensuring that safety was part of the organisation’s DNA.

COSEGO has held 100 ordinary meetings and 4 extraordinary meetings, and today’s meeting analysed and dealt with the most relevant operational safety issues involving the air navigation service provided by ENAIRE, thus showing the commitment of its Management and professionals throughout this time to what is the organisation’s top priority: safety.

Over these five years, COSEGO has led and approved various projects and initiatives that define ENAIRE’s actions in relation to operational safety, including:

– Establishing action plans to enhance safety at various units.

– Approving the Fair Culture Policy and all its associated procedures, allowing ENAIRE to have a Fair Culture environment that encourages event notification and everything that entails.

– Monitoring the process of adapting to the new Regulation laying down common requirements for service providers (Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/373).

– Launching the GIGANTES Project, which uses Big Data techniques to analyse information and make safety-related decisions.

– Establishing a unit specialising in Human Factors, tasked with, among other things, deploying a fatigue and stress risk management system (FSRMS).

– Creating a specific department and the mechanisms necessary to coordinate safety studies with drone operators.

– Launching a Safety Culture at ENAIRE and implementing measurement indicators (as part of the “I hear you” project).

– Drive to establish new safety methods: Observational Surveys (NOM – Normal Operations Monitoring).

– Creating the Safety Committee, with the continuous involvement of air control trade unions and associations, and launching and tracking, through this same Committee, an Action Plan to Enhance Operational Safety.