ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the proceduralization of safety management in the context of European Air Traffic Management (ATM), from the perspective of a priori safety assessment of ATM operations/systems and considers the implications for future European safety regulation. It discusses the European Aviation Safety Agency–the body responsible for the European-level ATM safety regulations–setting out a detailed, logical case that the regulations are inadequate and why they should therefore be changed radically. The chapter suggests that the problems described are confined to ATM–on the contrary, the research indicates that they are more widespread. The EUROCONTROL Agency has proposed a solution to the problem in the form of a success and failure, argument-driven approach to safety assessment, but it needs to be underpinned by equivalent changes in the safety assessment regulations. The assurance activities are the processes that need to be carried out, during each lifecycle phase, in order to generate evidence that the arguments have been satisfied.
