Eliciting information for safety assessment

This paper presents an approach that has been used in the Mediterranean Free Flight project to elicit information from operational experts (pilots and controllers). The project investigates new Air Traffic Management (ATM) concepts and procedures delegating to aircrew some controller tasks related to separation assurance. The information obtained from the operational experts has been used for the safety assessment of these new concepts and procedures. A set of specific exercises were added to the conventional real time and cockpit simulations, to offer the operational experts the opportunity to familiarise with the new procedures and to experience normal and abnormal events during their usage. In this way – even if concepts and procedures were extremely innovative and there was a lack of real operational experience about them – valid information from the operational experts could be gathered. The information elicited has been very useful for the identification and analysis of the possible hazards related to the use of the new concepts and procedures, and for the definition of the related safety requirements.