MORs and AIRPROXs are public domain, and rightly so.The more 'speculative' safety reports, which might identify trends, postulate future developments, are not pure facts and official investigation. The writer's opinion now comes into it.
Describing 'Andrew' as a whistleblower is false. He has not blown the whistle on anything. All the incidents were investigated and if AIRPROXs or MORs, would have been published in the respective digests. If lessons had to be learned, CAA SRG ATSD would have worked with TC's safety department to ensure that they were disseminated appropriately.
I do a lot of work within the area of safety. Most of what I help to create is 'commercial in confidence', because it is speculative, and has commercially sensitive information in it. The regulator, CAA SRG, does of course see and examine it, it just isn't available to order from their website by the general public.
A line has to be drawn somewhere as to what is allowed into the public domain. Incidents which fall under certain definitions have to be reported and published, by law. Public domain, and all ATCOs would agree with that.
What about others? I can file a 'safety observation', which might detail a mistake I felt I was about to make, in an effort to highlight it to other ATCOs. Safety wasn't compromised. I didn't actually make a mistake, but thought that I might, given different circumstances. Should that be public domain? It still gets logged into our Safety Tracking and Reporting database, and CAA SRG are informed if deemed appropriate by the reporter or unit safety dept., so any lessons learned are again disseminated across the unit and UK ATC as a whole.
NATS has a very open safety culture, people speak out about safety all the time. If someone doesn't feel able to, for whatever reason, there is always the excellent CHIRP.
If every little thing was open to the general public, then I'd venture that the safety culture would actually be less open than it is now.
Last edited by Gonzo; 25th Mar 2008 at 17:03.
Reason: formatting