Results of data analysis, voluntary safety reporting and stakeholder collaboration prompted an official of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) Air Traffic Organization (ATO) to conclude in June that “the future is bright” for further reducing altitude deviations in the National Airspace System. Solutions will hinge on joint efforts by agency safety specialists and their counterparts in the aviation industry, a partnership enabled by the ATO safety management system (SMS) framework that protects information sharing and builds trust, he told the Airborne Conflict Safety Forum, held in Brussels, Belgium (ASW, 9/14).1
Joseph Teixeira, the ATO’s vice president of safety and technical training, said, “For the past decade, altitude deviations [have] been the single largest reported item by those voluntary safety programs that pilots [use to] report, so it is a big issu…
