ICAO (And Incident Reporting) Turns 75

Did you know … ?

Last month was the 75th anniversary of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) which was established in December 1944 at an aviation industry convention in Chicago. As well as founding ICAO, the same Chicago Convention also agreed a common standard for incident reporting. So, you might say that Incident Reporting also celebrated its 75th birthday last month!

One of the many great successes of ICAO over the decades has been the consolidation of data and creation of actionable intelligence about safety. For example, three phases of safety management can be discerned in ICAO data for the past 60 years, which in turn demonstrate how the aviation industry has driven progress and change and been a leader in safety:

1940’s to the 1970’s: Relatively many more safety incidents and serious accidents compared with the present day. These were more often caused by technical factors.

1980’s and 1990’s: Overall accident rate is much lower and human factors become prominent.

2000- present: The emergence of risk-based safety and performance management. The very small number of serious incidents are identified as stemming from organisational factors.

Incident reporting remains a top 5 critical requirement for safety management software; and not just in safety management but also in quality (reporting of corrective and preventive actions or CAPA), environmental, risk and compliance management. People in the field need to easily and effectively raise an alert when something is amiss.

User experience in incident and operational reporting, therefore, is, and will remain, a product management priority at Ideagen.

Happy birthday, ICAO and Incident Reporting!