A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/597273
WEEKLY MESSAGE FROM ATO COO TERI L. BRISTOL The Top 5 Hazards for 2016 Hi everyone. The ATO's Top 5 Hazard list is a powerful illustration of our proactive safety efforts. By collecting data, finding the most pressing risk areas, fixing them, and monitoring the results, we're preventing conditions that could give rise to a safety problem. That's our approach – Collect. Find. Fix. Monitor. I'm proud to announce the new Top 5 list for fiscal year 2016 . This year, we're going to focus on the following items: 1. Wake Separation: Difficulty of pilots and controllers to separate for wake leading to loss of wake separation 2. Large o r Heavy Aircraft Wake Turbulence: Large or heavy aircraft wake turbulence encounter despite maintaining separation 3. Helicopter Operations: Close - proximity helicopter operations in the vicinity of an airport 4. Tower Visual Scanning: Air Traffic Control overlooked traffic due to visual scanning technique 5. Weather Access: Lack of or incomplete weather information displayed when using certain long - range radar Of course, we measure success by what we fix. We're now beginning a process of corr ective action that will raise the national standards in each of these areas. Along with the corrective actions, we are developing a full Safety Risk Management Document for each issue with additional mitigations that will be included in the monitoring proc ess. If we find that we're not meeting the new standards, we'll continue to address the issue until we're successful. For instance, because of our monitoring efforts, we're going to revisit a hazard on the 2012 list: Altitude Compliance (i.e. a pilot opera ting at unexpected or unintended altitude). This issue continues to cause concern, as evidenced by our Risk Analysis Event and ATSAP data. In fact, it's still the top - reported issue by controllers and pilots. We're committed to finding an effective soluti on. This year, we also expanded the Top 5 program's data pool to include reports from the Confidential Information Safety Program (CISP), which merges voluntary, confidential safety reports from pilots and controllers. CISP reports add to an already robust set of data streams including ATSAP, automated air traffic data gathering tools, runway safety reports, surface risk analysis, and accident investigations from the National Transportation Safety Board, among others. You can read more about the FY16 Top 5 list items here . Let me also take a moment to report on our progress with last year's list. In FY15, we developed 26 corrective actions against potential hazards associated with surface memory aids, misapplied visual separation, weather information dissemination, and two that were associated with Opposite Direction Operations. Twenty - five of these actions have been implemented, and we're on track to complete the remaining ac tivity by December 31st. I want to thank everyone involved for their hard work and dedication to this effort. I also want to thank those involved in the development of this year's list. As we work to raise the standards for these areas, I encourage everyon e to continue submitting safety reports. These reports are foundational to our safety management system. In doing these things, we lower risk in the NAS. That's ATO's commitment. Thanks everyone,