United States Department of Transportation
i
Medically Related Pilot Incapacitation Event Data Pathways for Safety Assurance in Part 121 Operations
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2024-01-01
[PDF-721.94 KB]
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Abstract:MITRE was tasked by the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) Office of Aerospace Medicine (AAM) to document how safety-related incapacitation events involving Part 121 aircrews are recorded and reported to FAA. Through a series of anonymized, voluntary interviews with knowledgeable Part 121 carrier personnel, MITRE assessed these processes over four broad areas. 1. Air carrier procedures: All Part 121 carrier respondents require crews to report pilot incapacitation events once the aircraft has landed safely. Part 121 carrier procedures for responding to pilot incapacitation events followed two consistent paths, with information being routed through either an operational/management department or a safety investigation department. 2. Timing, content, and mechanisms: All Part 121 carriers focus on meeting the regulatory timing and content requirements for incidents set forth by 49 CFR § 830, but differences in carrier data reporting and the low frequency of incidents selected for investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board limit the event information available. While this information may be communicated to the FAA in several ways, there are indications that data are not being captured completely or consistently. Even if the FAA collects these data, they are not typically updated as new information becomes available or discovered, and they are not easily accessible to AAM for analysis and trending. 3. The reporting of pilot incapacitation events in their Safety Management Systems (SMS): There are several ways that a “pilot incapacitation event” can lead to an SMS review within a Part 121 air carrier, but medically caused events are rare and unique enough that their safety assurance might not register as a hazard to instate new risk controls. 4. The degree to which the air carrier could conform to a standardized reporting process to the FAA: All Part 121 air carrier personnel interviewed for this work believed their organizations would be willing to share protected data with the FAA if those efforts sufficiently defined safety research or improvement goals. Several interviewees suggested studying these data as special initiatives within existing efforts and working groups rather than forming new consortia.
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