Federation News
Getting It Right: Preventing Maintenance Error
The Royal Aeronautical Society Airworthiness and Maintenance Group chaired by
John Saull, organised a one day Conference at the RAeS HQ in London on 7 October
2004 addressing the above title. The conference was well attended and covered a
range of subjects from both the civil and military fields of aircraft maintenance
engineering error management practices.
The keynote address covered the perspective of a JAR 145 Post Holder by an
airline technical director, followed by a paper dealing with Safety Management
and Changing Practices from the CAA UK. The Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal
Air Force each presented papers covering the work on MoD joint approaches to the
Convergence of Engineering Regulations, Human Factors and ‘A “Just Culture” not
a “No Blame” one’, across all the military aircraft maintenance activity. A
Regional Airline view on methods for preventing maintenance error and a CAA UK
presentation on the relationship between aircraft design and the subsequent
maintenance tasking, completed the civil operator and civil authority range of
subjects.
The conference concluded with an aviation lawyers dissertation on Corporate
Responsibility for Airworthiness followed by a effective interactive discussion
session facilitated by David King, Deputy Chief Inspector of the UK Air
Accidents Investigation Branch, under the title Accident and Incident Causal
Factors – How Can Industry Improve?
This was an interesting and useful conference covering both civil and military
aspects of a significant aviation safety subject. IFA has an electronic copies of
the presentations made to the conference. Copies may also be obtained from the
RAeS Conference Department.
Andrew McClymont – IFA VP Europe