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As of November 2015, pilots and other professional staff – be they employees or contract workers – will be able to report safety incidents under a much improved EU-wide regime for occurrence reporting. Enshrined in the new EU Occurrence Reporting Regulation (EU) No 376/2014 (ORR), which has been published on 24 April, these rules represent a major step toward a pro-active, evidence-based aviation safety management system, aimed at preventing air accidents in Europe.

In particular, this ORR makes a major contribution to create a stronger ‘Just Culture’ environment. Among others, pilots will benefit from improved provisions against the inappropriate use of safety information and from a stricter protection of the reporter of a safety occurrence. In addition, each company will have to develop and abide by internal rules describing how the Just Culture principles are guaranteed and implemented. Crucially, the regulation also mandates the setting-up of an ‘appeal body’ at national level, which the operational staff can rely on in case any of their Just Culture-related rights have been violated.

ECA has been a vocal supporter of the EU Commission’s initial proposal and was instrumental to get improvements introduced by the European Parliament along the way. Until the ORR’s application on 15 November 2015,  ECA will participate in the preparation of the necessary implementing rules, guidance material and IT applications for the recording, exchange and analysis of information.

Learn more about the Regulation on ECA’s website