Have We Learned Enough from Überlingen: The Challenges of Safety Improvement in European Air Traffic Management

This paper identifies the complex ways in which technical, organisational and political constraints shape the decisions and actions taken by national and international safety organisations. In particular, we assess the interventions made by Swiss Federal agencies and by the Air Navigation Service provider (ANSP) following the Überlingen mid-air collision in July 1 2002. Later sections show that there are strong similarities between the influences that informed their decisions and the factors that directed the work of the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (EUROCONTROL). We address claims that ‘more should have been done’ in the aftermath of an accident. Often these assertions are made with the benefit of hindsight and neglect the organisational, technical and political constraints that act on national and international bodies. In order to improve our response to major accidents we should, therefore, spend correspondingly less time on blaming regulatory organisations than on working to shape the legislative and political context in which those organisations work.