Airport Safety


With the expected growth in air transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the aviation industry will need to adopt new measures to continue improving aviation safety. Safety management systems can contribute to this effort by helping airports detect and correct safety problems before they result in aircraft accidents or incidents. Increasing a system’s level of safety also leads to reduced material losses and enhances productivity.


ARA provides technical risk modeling for various components of the airport system, including runway safety areas, runway protection zones, and runway incursions. Our risk assessment tools provide step-by-step procedures that use historical aircraft performance, weather data, and airfield configuration to quantitatively evaluate the risk of each operation and its probability distribution. Safety risk management is used to prioritize those risks according to their classification and to define risk-mitigating actions that can be continuously monitored.

ARA also works with airports to develop complete safety management systems. As the developers of the Guidebook for Airport Safety Management Systems, ARA provides services to help document identified hazards and mitigations; monitor and measure the airport’s ongoing safety experience; establish a voluntary, non-punitive safety reporting system that can be used by employees of the airport operator, airlines, and tenants; and improve the entire airport’s safety culture. We also provide training that helps to ensure that safety management becomes a permanent fixture for the airport.

ARA also assists commercial airports in meeting FAA and Transportation Security Administration requirements and developing effective countermeasures for countering the risk of security threats to people and civil aviation assets and operations. ARA has provided these services for more than 100 aviation facilities across the U.S., providing a higher level of protection to facility occupants, and resilience to the national airspace system. ARA has provided similar services to local and international ports across the southeast U.S. to provide protection and resilience of intermodal shipping operations.

As a result of ARA’s innovation research, airports now have documented guidelines for developing and implementing airport safety management systems. Many airports are proceeding with the implementation of safety management systems, and ARA has worked with several of them to evaluate and help implement their systems.

Rich Speir PE  •  Tel: 410-540-9949