ABSTRACT
Air Traffic Control (ATC)-related incidents such as those related to separation, e.g. Loss Of Separation (LOS), are currently analyzed for the purpose of detecting failures or errors from or within the Air Traffic Management system, i.e. negative performance of the system. However, it is possible to assess the capability of the system and air traffic controllers in managing successfully such incidents using a different approach for their analysis based on an incident model that considers a characterization of the intrinsic functions of ATC. This paper presents the main attributes of the LOS analysis framework that enable (i) the enhancement of the way incidents are currently analyzed individually and (ii) the assessment of ATC safety performance. The initial results of the analysis of a database of 191 SRIs showed that in 72% of cases, ATCO(s) in interaction with the whole system successfully recovered the incidents and 19% were not fully recovered by ATC alone and necessitated the support of airborne recovery. These findings help identifying the 9% incidents that failed to be managed, thus enabling more focus on them.
