Safe Services

The objectives for services and other functions have been achieved well.

Airport and air navigation service safety remained good during the review year. There were no accidents involving commercial aviation during 2003.

The CAA’s system for detecting and reporting anomalous situations picked up 112 situations relating to general and commercial aviation which fulfilled the Flight Safety Authority’s definition of incidents endangering air safety. Of these, five involved flight damage or accidents. In addition, four serious incidents were reported (incidents of class A or AA). Air traffic control played its normal safety promotion role in these incidents, which is to say that it did not affect the onset of these events.

Air traffic control reported 26 class B incidents (in which the anomaly is significant but did not cause immediate danger). In one of these cases, air traffic control was a causative factor. In addition to these, air traffic control acted defectively in five cases, although the degree of seriousness of the resulting situations was lower than in the previous cases.

Of the other 72 reported cases there were 28 class C reports involving anomalies in air traffic control actions or technical functions. The rest were remarks concerning pilot action or completely external activity. In general these had no detrimental effect on safety.

At the beginning of 2003, thorough inspection of cargo hold luggage was introduced, in addition to security checks of passengers and hand luggage. The expansion of and significant increase in security checks required an outlay by the CAA of 21.6 million euros. The annual cost to the CAA of these security checks amounts to 14.6 million euros.