UAS Mishaps and Accidents

What are hazards and risks when it comes to aviation operations?

            Aviation is an inherently dangerous business that comes with many hazards and dangers.  Yet, aviation is still considered to be one of the safest ways to travel.  The reason for this is the communities focus on risk management and mitigation.  The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has published many articles and studies on the dangers of poor risk management and provided methods and techniques that allow the aviation community to mitigate and reduce these risks.  There are two important, yet different terms that all pilots must understand when completing risk management, hazard and risk.  As defined by the FAA Risk Management Handbook, a hazard is:

“…a present condition, event, object, or circumstance that could lead to or contribute to an unplanned or undesired event such as an accident. It is a source of danger” (Risk Management Handbook, 2009).

And a risk is:

“…the future impact of a hazard that is not controlled or eliminated. It can be viewed as future uncertainty created by the hazard. If it involves skill sets, the same situation may yield different risk” (Risk Management Handbook, 2009).

            These two definitions are important to understand because they are the essential building blocks to effective risk management.  At the most basic level, a pilot must be able to identify hazards, the risks associated with each of them and then determine a method to mitigate the risks.  According to the FAA, some of the most common hazards associated with aviation are fatigue, nicks in propeller blades, use of unapproved hardware and improper refueling (Risk Management Handbook, 2009).

What tools can be used to mitigate risks to BVLOS operations?

Beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations is an integral facet of UAS flights.  Unfortunately, current FAA regulations prohibit UAS operation in BVLOS without a waiver.  Due to the dangers and limitation of UAS in the BVLOS regime, over 99% of these difficult to get waivers have been denied.  Many factors need to be considered to minimize and mitigate risk when conducting BVLOS operations with UAS.  Precision Hawk has taken part in the Pathfinder Initiative which has focused on researching BVLOS operations for UAS.  Through their research they have determined the beginnings of a risk mitigation process for safe BVLOS operations within the National Airspace System.  Through their research, they determined that there are three essential components to safe BVLOS operation and risk management: detection, safety checks and operator training.

Detection – This is an essential aspect since the operator can no longer visually monitor the UAS.  The UAS must be able to detect cooperative and non-cooperative aircraft and provide the operator options for evasive action

Safety – This aspect includes pilot awareness of airspace, restrictions, and no-fly areas as well as thorough pre-checks of the UAS to ensure proper operation.  It also includes detailed understanding of UAS operation during hardware malfunctions.

Training – This component ensures that UAS operators receive BVLOS specific training and understand the challenges and risks associated with it.  A practical test was recommended to ensure full understanding of procedures and regulations.

How have human factors contributed to the UAS mishap and accident rates?

            According to the NTSB, 85 percent of aviation accidents have been caused by some form of human error or human factor.  One of the biggest areas of concern, and a large contributing factor to this statistic, is a lack of fundamental risk management skills and practices during the accident.  Many training programs for manned aircraft lack a significant focus on these essential skills and instead choose to focus more time on the practical skills of flying and the general knowledge required for practical tests.  While this creates skilled pilots, it does not always create safe ones (Risk Management Handbook, 2009).  UAS operations highlight these challenges even further because of the lack of training available for most UAS.  Many UAS can be bought commercially and require exactly zero training to operate them legally.  This presents a huge safety concern both from the skill perspective and the risk management perspective.  Because no training is required, UAS pilots do not learn about airspace, restrictions manned aircraft integration and avoidance and other essential aspects of flight.  This lack of knowledge leads to pilots flying in unsafe conditions (ex. weather, pilot fatigue, traffic, etc.) that they may not even realize are unsafe.

References:

Ferguson, A. (n.d.). Beyond Visual Line of Sight Drone Flight. Retrieved May 3, 2019, from https://www.precisionhawk.com/beyond-visual-line-of-sight-bvlos-drone-operations

Risk Management Handbook. (2009). Chapter One: Defining Elements of Risk Management (pp.1-8). Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/media/faa-h-8083-2.pdf