Business aviation is contributing to an unprecedented effort by Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) to understand how operators collect and process safety information. The foundation considers the Global Safety Information Project (GSIP), which is funded through a cooperative agreement with the FAA, a first step toward developing a global standard for aviation data collection and analysis.

Earlier this year, the foundation (Booth C13205) held focus groups in the Asia-Pacific and North and South America regions, the two regions chosen for the project. It plans to conduct workshops in the same locations next spring to develop actual toolkits and products based on the information gathered.

“Business aviation has been participating in the focus groups,” said Peter Stein, chairman of the FSF Business Advisory Committee. “Similar to the air carriers, we see data-sharing as an essential and vital tool to driving business aviation to better and better levels of safety.”

Aircraft operators can now take a more proactive approach to risk mitigation through traditional safety reports and technology, including quick access recorders that measure and store hundreds of flight parameters for easy download and analysis. The GSIP is not collecting data “per se,” Stein explained. “We want to know what you’re doing with your data,” he said. “It’s not a data collection program, it’s how you manage it all and (identifying) the potentials for data sharing.”

More so than Part 121 air carriers, business aviation is challenged in reaping the benefits of data sharing and analysis because corporate flight departments do not generate nearly as much data as airlines that fly thousands of flights each day. “I think it underscores the importance for data-sharing within the business aviation community. We do have some opportunities to aggregate,” said Stein, a corporate pilot whose own company participates in a flight-data analysis service offered by Austin Digital.

A decade ago, FSF helped introduce the business aviation community to the voluntary Flight Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA) program, which uses flight recorded data to improve aviation safety. More recently, it has encouraged greater participation by business aviation in the semi-official Aviation Safety Information Analysis & Sharing (ASIAS) program, a data-sharing effort involving the FAA and industry partners. There are presently 17 business aviation operators participating in ASIAS, along with 45 airlines.

“We’re encouraging business aviation operators who already have the ability to do the digital downloads to also take a long hard look at becoming a participant in the ASIAS program,” said Stein. “There’s a huge benefit in that we can not only see our business aviation aggregate data, but we’re also able to see airline data.”

While sharing data benefits safety analysis by contributing to a greater pool of operational information, the risk of legal liability may prevent some operators from participating. Protecting operators from legal proceedings is a focus of the GSIP project, Stein said.

“What we’re talking about when we talk about safety information protection is the availability of all of this data to be used in a civil and potentially criminal proceeding, a civil lawsuit for damages,” he explained. “There’s essentially little or no protection around the world. This is another finding that came out of these focus groups.”