Traditional ways of classifying aviation occurrences as accidents and serious incidents do not necessarily provide an accurate assessment of the risks of these events, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) says. As an alternative, EASA has developed the European Risk Classification Scheme (ERCS), designed to risk-classify all reported occurrences.
The development and use of ERCS was required by the European Parliament’s Regulation 376/2014, which called for development of a method of risk classification that would “facilitate an integrated and harmonised approach to risk management across the European aviation system and thus enable organisations, member states, the [European] Commission and [EASA] to focus on safety improvement efforts in a harmonised manner.”
The resulting ERCS calls for the risk classification of all aviation accidents and serious incidents that are reported to European authorities, with the primary purpose of risk scores “to be able to discrimina…
