Steve Bentley MD of Sofema Aviation Services (www.sassofia.com) takes a look at the Flight Ops Quality System

Introduction

In 1998 The Joint Aviation Authorities launched JAR OPS 1 (and “3”) contained within the document was for the first time a specific requirement (JAR OPS Subpart B 1.035) for an independent audit function within the Operations Environment – With the transition to EASA Regulation 965/2012 a number of anomalies and miss conceptions where addressed. 

The UAE Ops Regulation is fundamentally based on JAR OPS 1.

What is an EASA Quality System?

Essentially it consists of a method to deliver the organisations “product” under the control of nominated persons – this is a “Control of Quality” together with an independent function to assess compliance and this is known as “Quality Assurance”.

Note 1 – This appendix carries essential information relevant to the management and oversight responsibilities of an Organisation, both internally within the organisation and externally related to subcontract service providers.

(a) General An operator must have a sound and effective management structure in order to ensure the safe conduct of air operations.

Nominated post holders must have managerial competency together with appropriate technical/operational qualifications in aviation.

Note 2 – Consider the challenge of managing and maintaining competence – how is it controlled? How is it managed and against what standard is it audited?

(b) Nominated Post Holders

FDM Data Analysis Introduction

Introduction

EASA Compliant Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) is the exploitation of flight data to support an understanding of the various exposures, the knowledge of which, may successfully lead to the development of mitigations which can be employed to enhance flight safety.

Aircrafts are analysed to identify any exceedances (a specialist task typically performed using software tools). Analysts can analyse data from normal ops to identify trends before there is a significant event or incident.

The amount of Digital Data available in modern aircraft facilitates FDM providing the opportunity for effective analysis which is essential to provide for the best decisions regarding both the performance of flight crew as well as the aircraft systems and processes.

Aircraft are analysed to identify any exceedances (a specialist task typically performed using software tools).

Gathering FDM Data

Traditionally, data needs to be downloaded to a removable disk regularly before the data is lost. But latest technologies allow wireless data transmission from recorders to the ground station, which is more accessible for research and monitoring purposes.

SofemaOnline (www.sofemaonline.com) takes a look at fire safety.

Understanding simple rules can help us to do the right thing when we are faced with a Fire Emergency.

Ensuring Fire safety means understanding the set of practices which are intended to reduce the exposure to the risk of Fire under any circumstances.

Fire safety measures include all activities and behaviours which are intended to prevent the possibility of an uncontrolled fire.