Aerospace performance factor and its potential advances

¹ Flight Preparation Department, Faculty of Aerospace, University of Kosice, Slovakia
² EDP Head of Safety Unit, Network Manager Directorate, Eurocontrol, Belgium
³ President and CEO, The Aloft Group, Ashburn, VA, USA

^* Maria Kovacova: mkovacov@gmail.com

Abstract

The aviation safety community has traditionally measured safety performance through the lens of undesirable events – the historic recording, investigating and trending of the failures in the system. While this approach gives great insight into what has happened and why, it is of questionable value in determining what, where and when the next incident will occur. With the advent of the Aerospace Performance Factor or APF, aviation is taking a giant step toward a decision management solution that answers these questions and paves the way toward a revolution in safety performance measurement. The APF methodology is designed to expand the view of what information contributes to the aviation safety picture. The APF paints a broad landscape of organizational effectiveness by fusing weighted data from sources not traditionally included in the safety discussion, and then presenting the information in a way that assists aviation leaders in making better risked‐based decisions. This paper will discuss the APF from its to the progress of the initial and ongoing APF operational implementation, to its potential as a risk‐forecasting tool for the aviation industry.