17 May 2023
What the future holds for IOSA
The IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA), IATA’s flagship safety audit program, is turning 20 years old this year. IOSA was initiated in 2003 and has become the global benchmark for operational safety audits.
The program began as a code-share safety audit program to allow airlines that codeshare to monitor each other’s compliance with important safety standards, including the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) relevant safety requirements.
The audit covers eight operational areas:
· Organisation and Management System
· Flight Operations
· Operational Control and Flight Dispatch
· Aircraft Engineering and Maintenance
· Cabin Operations
· Ground Handling Operations
· Cargo Operations
· Security Management
IOSA standards and recommended practices are developed and maintained by the IOSA Task Forces, comprised of safety experts in each operational domain.
Today, 20 years later, IOSA is the benchmark safety audit in the airline safety space. It is the standard requirement to measure and improve safety compliance and performance, but also a main business enabler to enter charter and wet-lease agreements, alliances, and codeshares, as mentioned earlier. Regulators worldwide have gained trust into the program’s robustness and reliability. ICAO has issued two resolutions, recognising the IOSA Program’s global safety benefit and over 30 civil aviation authorities worldwide recognise and use IOSA to complement their state safety oversight activities. Smart regulatory use of industry standards such as IOSA reduce redundant audit activities and allow authorities to focus their limited resources on where the safety risks lie in their aviation systems.
Mark Searle, IATA’s Director Safety, states ‘Some 400 airlines are IOSA registered of which some 100 are not IATA members. The airlines are registered in over 130 countries worldwide. IOSA is mandatory for any airline that wants to become and stay an IATA member’.
The recently released 2022 IATA Safety Report shows that IOSA registered airlines continue to have a better safety performance than the rest of the industry. In the 5-year average, IOSA airlines in aggregate had an accident rate of 0.88 accidents per million sectors flown, whereas non-IOSA carriers had a rate of 2.37 accidents per million sectors flown.
Source: IATA GADM, 2023
From a purely compliance-based model to a risk-based approach
The program has produced over 6,000 industry audits in its history. While the safety improvements and the reduction in redundant activities have been delivered, IATA is now introducing changes to ensure the program continues to deliver value to users and raise the bar on safety.
With the increasing operating maturity and compliance levels of operators, the marginal effect that an audit might produce is decreasing. The reduced marginal safety improvement achieved by the prescriptive nature of this assurance approach has led to industry feedback and the desire to move the IOSA audit towards a risk-based audit.
Under Risk-Based IOSA, IATA is going to perform audits, tailored to the airline’s individual operating profile and history. This way, the audit will focus on the requirements which are most critical to the airline’s individual operating profile and history. Additionally, IOSA is introducing a maturity assessment of the operator’s Safety Management System (SMS) and other safety critical programs such as the flight crew training program or the flight data analysis program. The maturity assessment will allow airlines, their codeshare partner as well as regulators to obtain a more nuanced and complete picture about the airline’s SMS and operating safety maturity.
Concurrently, IATA is also modernising the operating model of the IOSA Program. The long-standing IOSA accredited Audit Organizations, which have played an important part in the success of the program, will be successively phased out. As of 2025, IATA will directly engage auditors to facilitate the audits. For this, IATA is investing into its IT infrastructure and into scaling up its resources.
Pilot Phase: Completed
As part of the transition, IATA developed a trial phase in which the new audit methods such as the maturity assessment and the risk-based scoping of audit checklists have been tested.
The trial audits have been conducted in a live audit environment with six volunteering airlines worldwide. All trial audits have led to great improvements in the depth of the auditing activities. Airlines, auditors and IATA observers alike, were pleased with the new process. Further refinements to the process were identified, as anticipated.
"The new, more thorough approach will bring a fresh breeze into the safety auditing space, and many airlines will be challenges in a healthy way to continuously improve."
Mark Searle, IATA Safety Director
Added value and clear benefits through a modernised audit
There are high expectations from the significant changes that the program is undergoing. With the risk-based approach, airlines, regulators, other organisations as well as the travelling public will benefit. The goals of the risk-based approach are:
· Tailored and reduced audit scope focusing efforts where they are most needed
· Improved audit methods through maturity evaluation
· Improved management and standardisation of auditors
· Safety insights are captured to deliver safety improvements and reduction of local accident rates
· New insights through improved audit report
· Long-term sustainability of IOSA program through direct management of insourced products
Further information on IOSA and the Risk-Based Approach can be obtained at www.iata.org/risk-based-iosa.
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