The Interaction between Safety Culture and Degraded Modes:

This paper presents the initial results from a study into the interaction between safety culture and degraded modes of operation in European Air Traffic Management (ATM). Degraded modes occur when operators struggle to maintain levels of service even though key elements of their infrastructure have failed. Safety culture can be simply described as ‘the way safety is done around here’ – emphasizing that it is concerned with the realities of safety, and not necessarily what people say should be done. Although safety culture therefore deals necessarily with attitudes, beliefs and even feelings – so called ‘soft’ phenomena – it does not mean that these are any less important than more objective and visible safety management artifacts such as standards and procedures etc. Poor safety culture is often linked to the causes of major accidents and incidents. Recent initiatives in Air Traffic Management, including the European Safety Programme and its precursor, the Strategic Safety Action Plan, have also recognized that degraded modes of operation played a significant role in previous adverse events. Operators often reveal a high degree of tolerance for degraded infrastructures. There is a “can do” attitude, whereby staff struggle to maintain operations when it might be more prudent to reduce the level of service or even close airspace in order to maintain levels of safety. The high level objectives of this project are: 1. to identify safety cultural aspects that influence tolerance to degraded modes and 2. to identify ‘best practices’ that Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) can apply to deal with degraded mode of operations.