It will certainly come as no surprise to readers of this blog that government agencies do not give ramp areas the same level of attention to safety they give to airline operations, maintenance or other areas of an airport, such as runways and taxiways.
Some may be happy to leave the Federal Aviation Administration or National Transportation Safety Board out of their ramp business and do not want a safety spotlight shined on ramp activities. I know I might have felt that way myself when I ran my FBO.
But my years on the NTSB convinced me that this lack of official attention can also foster a lack of respect for the critical safety impact of ramp functions. In addition, ramp incidents and accidents are very costly and analysis of incident and accident data could help save money.
What the General Accountability Office found in the report done last year was that the "efforts to address the occurrence of safety incidents in ramp areas were hindered by the lack of safety data on the nature, extent and cost of such incidents or accidents."
The GAO determined that neither the FAA nor the NTSB collected comprehensive data on incident or accident occurrences on the ramp.
The GAO's conclusion was that without this data the FAA could not assess the risk of a catastrophic accident on the ramp. While the FAA agreed with the GAO, it will be interesting to watch what the agency actually does in response to this report.
I hope that a greater emphasis on the safety significance of ramp activities increases the perception of the importance of the work performed on the ramp.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: You can read more on this issue here.]
