As you know, from 15 February till 31 March, we conducted a safety survey, aimed at assessing the current level of safety culture in our airlines. The reason for this is the future implementation of the new EU regulation 376/2014 on the reporting, analysis and follow-up of occurrences in civil aviation. We were pleased to receive over 400 replies: thanks to all our members who participated in it and shared the word to their colleagues. You can find in this article a short summary of the results and how BeCA considers the way forward.

Scope & Objective

The study was aimed at all Belgium-based crews. Responses from other operators were therefore discarded. A letter was sent to all safety managers when we launched the survey, to explain the reasons for our initiative and to offer our assistance in analysing the results and imagining the way forward. Despite this letter, several airlines’ CEOs expressed their concerns about the publication of the results. We reassured them and promised that only aggregate de-identified results would be published. Indeed, our sole aim is to identify strengths and weaknesses in each airline and help them improve.

The results

In one word: no airline in Belgium can be considered as a bad or good sheep! All of them have their strengths and weaknesses and not necessarily in the same areas. Among the positive points, pilots usually believe that their airline, safety manager and colleagues are committed to safety, although some safety departments seem to lack resources to carry out their tasks properly.

One issue however came out in all airlines: fatigue. The majority of pilots believe their company does not encourage reporting fatigue and they therefore would rather call sick than fatigued. Another interesting point worth mentioning is that most pilots consider they could not work under current working conditions their whole career. This is particularly interesting considering the Belgian government’s plan to increase the legal pension age.

Reporting is another area where there seems to be room for improvement. Even if the large majority of pilots recognise that the reporting method is easily accessible and usable, almost a third of them feel reporting can have negative consequences on their career. On the implementation of Just Culture principles, large differences can be noted between airlines. Some of them seem not to make a clear distinction between a no-blame error and an intentional violation. This is problematic as a good safety culture lies on a culture of trust. Not suprisingly, only one airline gets a good score in terms of the implementation of a comprehensive safety management system. Finally, pilots usually think communication towards employees about FDM, safety news and reports could be improved and increased.

The way forward

This study was an important initiative for us and we believe it can become a useful tool for our airlines’ management, if they decide so. We have therefore prepared individual reports per airline that we hope to present in the near future in order to discuss the results with the management. The next step would be to organise another, more detailed, survey at company level, to identify more precisely areas for improvement. BeCA will maintain contacts with each airline and will offer its expertise to ensure our airlines are ready for the implementation of regulation 376/2014. We will keep you posted on any new developments.

*The full version of the report is only available to our members (a lighter, public version can be downloaded from our website), but results per airline have been deidentified. Should you be interested in consulting the results of your airline, feel free to contact us.