Discipline
All
What do we want ?
An independent and operational Competition Accident Investigation Committee under CIVL or the Union.
As all previous proposals about “safety” suggest, federations record incidents locally (most don’t even have such a system), but there is no global mechanism to report, analyze, and publish competition accidents. Because of that, important lessons stay hidden, patterns are missed, and pilots cannot learn from past events. Competition safety will only improve if we build a culture of open investigation and shared learning.
So we will not only retrospectively gather fatality and accident lists, but also be able to act upon existing data to (hopefully) prevent future accidents.
The committee does not make policy but only investigates, reports, and tracks competition accidents.
As all previous proposals about “safety” suggest, federations record incidents locally (most don’t even have such a system), but there is no global mechanism to report, analyze, and publish competition accidents. Because of that, important lessons stay hidden, patterns are missed, and pilots cannot learn from past events. Competition safety will only improve if we build a culture of open investigation and shared learning.
So we will not only retrospectively gather fatality and accident lists, but also be able to act upon existing data to (hopefully) prevent future accidents.
The committee does not make policy but only investigates, reports, and tracks competition accidents.
How do we achieve that ?
- The committee will collect and analyze all reported accidents from Cat 1 and Cat 2 FAI competitions.
- All reports will be published on civlcomps.org (or a similar public database) to ensure transparency and open access.
Implementation
- Reporting obligation: All Cat 1 and Cat 2 organizers and/or meet directors or safety directors must send a standardized Accident Report Form to the committee within 15 days after the competition ends.
- Non-compliance: Organizers, meet directors, or safety directors who do not report or refuse to provide needed information may lose future sanctioning or meet director approval.
- Investigation: The committee will contact witnesses, review tracklogs, and prepare a final report. The goal is not to assign blame, but to identify causes and suggest preventive actions.
- Confidentiality: Personal or sensitive information may be hidden, but all facts and conclusions must remain public.
- Transparency: The committee publishes the final report online within 3 months after receiving the Accident Report Form.
Expected results
- Data-based safety recommendations for CIVL, manufacturers, and pilots
- A public, searchable knowledge base of competition accidents
- Greater accountability and transparency in competition organization
- All reports will be published on civlcomps.org (or a similar public database) to ensure transparency and open access.
Implementation
- Reporting obligation: All Cat 1 and Cat 2 organizers and/or meet directors or safety directors must send a standardized Accident Report Form to the committee within 15 days after the competition ends.
- Non-compliance: Organizers, meet directors, or safety directors who do not report or refuse to provide needed information may lose future sanctioning or meet director approval.
- Investigation: The committee will contact witnesses, review tracklogs, and prepare a final report. The goal is not to assign blame, but to identify causes and suggest preventive actions.
- Confidentiality: Personal or sensitive information may be hidden, but all facts and conclusions must remain public.
- Transparency: The committee publishes the final report online within 3 months after receiving the Accident Report Form.
Expected results
- Data-based safety recommendations for CIVL, manufacturers, and pilots
- A public, searchable knowledge base of competition accidents
- Greater accountability and transparency in competition organization
Issue category :
Comments
I second that!
We have developed a nice (and ambitious) workflow, which we don't seem to follow ourselves. We are already gathering incident/accident data. I can see a few topics reg. safety statistics on this forum, but no working group created, no brainstorming, no drafting etc. I don't even know who created it.
I believe that the incident reporting forms should be better developed. If people are reporting now and then we change the form, then either we have incompatible data or have to ask people to fill in again.
I believe we should step back a bit, create a working group, start with some basics (like the steps outlined by Louis in Building a Just Culture for Free Flight, which I totally agree with). Only then should we be ready to start this process. If we have set ourselves (again, ambitious) target of finishing a task within two weeks, then it's not a long wait. Let's not lose the great momentum that we are having.
I intended to build a gaggle report. I trust no one else but the pilots to say what happen / happened in a gaggle. I'm also willing to follow Just Culture principle but if this project intend to gently wait accident report for organiser I'm out and will propose another solution / working group.
We are a pilot union, there is no comitee per se. At least yet.