Using Heinrich’s (Bird’s) Pyramid of Adverse Events to Assess the Level of Safety in an Airline

Abstract

One of the key concepts in matters of flight safety is that of special (abnormal) situations, with airworthiness regulation and certification of aviation equipment being based on this concept. At the same time, one is forced to admit that today there is no explicit interpretation of the standardized traits of special situations, nor are they not fully elucidated in the scientific literature. In this article we propose a pyramid-based approach to interpreting special (abnormal) in-flight situations, which allows for risk assessment not using risk matrices, but instead relying only on the probabilistic characteristics of the occurrence of events. Using the presence of a causal relationship between the layers of the pyramid, we propose an algorithm for the transition of varying degrees of danger of special situations. This algorithm can be used to develop an on-board device that informs the pilot about the dynamics of transitions from one situation to another, representing each emergency situation in a certain color.