Quantitative analysis of aviation incidents: A comprehensive study on bird strikes and safety improvement opportunities

Abstract

Safety in aviation has various connotations. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), it is a state in which the possibility of harm to people and property is minimised and maintained within a continuous process of identifying threats and managing safety risks at an acceptable level or below an acceptable level. Actions related to threat identification can be reactive, proactive, or predictive. Reactive actions aim to verify what happened, why, and how to prevent it from recurring. For this purpose, incidents that occurred in the past are analysed. By Polish law, the Commission for Investigating Aviation Accidents investigates accidents and serious incidents, while incidents mostly fall under the responsibility of the aviation organisation in which the incident occurred. Therefore, this article aims to identify threats causing incidents. Three thousand two hundred aviation incidents reported between 2017 and 2022 to the Civil Aviation Office as part of the mandatory and voluntary event reporting system were analysed. The identified causes, due to the diversity of their description, were divided into four groups. The first group consists of human factors, representing inadequate actions by pilots, crews, or individuals who caused a situation of danger. The second group comprises errors in the operation of technical objects, including aircraft. This group also includes situations where foreign objects violate airspace or minimum conditions are breached. The next group includes environmental causes such as wild animals, birds, and weather conditions. The last group consists of procedures related to flight phases.