Risk Management in Air Navigation Services

The need to develop and adopt legal standards for safety management was identified at the Conference of General Directors of Civil Aviation dedicated to the global strategy of aviation safety (Montreal, March 20-22, 2006) and additionally supported by the recommendations of the Safety Conference (Montreal, March 29 - April 1, 2010). The year 2006 saw the introduction of issues related to the safety management system to the Convention’s annexes. The existing fundamental rules related to SMS were included in the annexes: 1 - Personnel licensing, 6 - Operation of Aircraft, 8 - Airworthiness of Aircraft, 11 - Air Traffic Services, 13 - Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation, and 14 - Aerodromes. In addition, due to the dynamic development of aviation and, at the same time, the growing need to create the highest standards in the field of safety management systems, the Air Navigation Commission established the Safety Management Panel (SMP) to develop the content of Annex 19. After several years of reconciliation and consultation, this document was finally adopted by the ICAO Council in 2013. It has become the ipso facto document that provides the basis for creating an effective safety management system, as it is compatible and also adapted to the most effective practices indicated in the ICAO Doc 9859 Safety Management Manual. Annex 19 sets out the responsibility of States, the safety management system and the collection of information related to safety. The National Civil Aviation Safety Programme and the structure of this system were also dealt with. The whole idea is to support states in the process of hazard identification and risk management. The purpose of the article was: to highlight selected elements of the risk management process in a practical dimension, to present the principles for assessing the degree of risk by an air navigation service provider, and to identify ways of improving this process. Searching for an answer to the main research problem contributed to achieving this goal. The research problem was expressed in the form of a question: How does the air navigation service provider manage the risk under the air traffic safety management system in order to achieve compliance with regulatory requirements and to achieve the assumed parameters (indicators) in the area of safety? With regard to the main research problem, the following research hypotheses were formulated: 1. I believe that an air navigation service provider undertakes an assessment of the degree of possible danger in civil aviation to identify hazards in air traffic as part of a safety management system. 2. I suppose that the air navigation service provider manages the risk in a manner consistent with the provisions of law and by using procedures included in normative documents.