Better Standards like AS9120 are Needed in Aviation Now More than Ever (Demo)

As far as safety and maintenance are concerned, the aviation industry has a lot of room for improvement. Doug Fraser and Ian Hampton, faculty members of the University of New South Wales and contributors to the independent news source The Conversation, recently discussed the complications that Australia’s major airliners are having in these two aspects. However, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) says that it’s not just Australia who has these problems, but rather the whole world:

“A significant proportion of accidents result from errors or omissions in aircraft maintenance. According to the IATA statistics, maintenance “events” (i.e. specific operations that were done wrongly, or not done when required) contributed to 10% of the 432 accidents investigated between 2009 and 2013, while 29% involved some kind of aircraft malfunction. In other cases, shoddy maintenance procedures were identified as a “latent” factor contributing to the outcome. In a time when intense competition is placing pressure on the world’s airlines to keep pushing down their operating costs, maintenance has been an obvious first resort for cost-saving, since unlike many other measures, it remains invisible to the passenger unless severely neglected.”

This story only goes to show how important it is for the industry to implement better safety standards. However, the call for better safety and maintenance isn’t only directed to the world’s airline companies, but to everyone else involved too, especially airport administrators and airplane parts distributors. The latter should definitely consider getting an AS9120 certificate from reputable accreditors like International Standards Authority, Inc. This certificate will prove that the parts they sell all meet stringent safety standards, especially in terms of airworthiness and conformance. AS9120 is an extension of the ISO 9001 management system designed by the International Organization for Standardization, the major difference being that AS9120 is specifically designed for airplane parts distributors. This management system is rather holistic in nature since it covers various aspects of quality control on airplane parts, including employee training, risk assessment, and traceability of defective parts. Meeting all of these safety requirements entails a lot of work on the part of the distributors, which is why obtaining an AS9120 certification is no easy task. Their effort won’t go to waste, though, since accredited distributors automatically have an edge over their competitors. Not only will they have a better reputation, they will also benefit from more efficient quality control systems, especially when it comes to detecting “rogue parts” (i.e. defective airplane parts mistakenly classified as serviceable), which the IATA believes to be responsible for 7 percent of all air accidents worldwide in 2013. (Source: We’re flying into an aviation skills crisis, with safety under the radar, The Conversation, June 2, 2014)