A Contemporary Issue in Aviation - Safety / Security Issues (Other (Not Listed) Sample)

A Literature Review of Safety/Security Issues in Aviation
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Eastern New Mexico University
AVS 310
Introduction
Aviation is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. People prefer moving to various destinations using aircrafts due to their faster speed and an assumed ‘guaranteed’ safety. This is however false to some extent. Safety and security in the aviation industry in general is not automatic as people may tend to assume. A number cases of insecurity and safety through hijacking, terrorism, mysterious loss of aircrafts, and unprecedented accidents have been reported in the recent past. An airport is another important facility in the aviation industry, it is through it that transportation via aircrafts are facilitated, besides providing a link between the aviation system and the other modes of transport. Management of air traffic operations also takes place at the airport. International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) has the responsibility to develop a framework within which management of safety at airports and airlines can be carried out.
The purpose of this study is to understand some of the reported cases of insecurity, as well as the safety and security management strategies that can be employed to minimize or completely eliminate the causes of insecurity/safety in airlines and airports. Through the initiatives of ICAO a number of guidelines, which are not only clear, but also specific has been put in place to improve the management of safety and security in airports, and airlines. This study will focus on the level of compliance of different airline management agencies with the set rules and regulations. Some countries like Taiwan do not have obligations to follow the rules set by ICAO, and this even makes the study interesting. This paper would provide an insight into various safety and security regulations that are both the passengers aboard, the aviation engineers, airway control agencies, and, the pilots ought to observe while managing the airports and aircrafts in flights. In addition, aviation safety will also be looked at from the economic point of view by scrutinizing the available documentation on the same.
Literature review
Safety and insecurity are two terms that are occasionally used to mean the same thing. However, according to the Aviation Safety Regulation Review (2014), these terms are totally different, indeed, insecurity is a phenomenon that results from lack of proper safety measures. Insecurity is a problem that manifests in the aviation sector in various ways. Many incidences have been reported where unauthorized weapons find their way into passenger aircrafts, or even prohibited drugs. One question that every scholar is likely to ask is "how does all this happen when screening is done by the airline management?”. These are questions whose answers have not been fully exploited, even though various scholars have made attempts to come up with (through investigations and research) and suggest strategies that could be used to correct the a normally.
When one talks about safety and security problems in aviation in the United States, probably the most significant event that people are likely to think of is the September 2001 unfortunate event that saw a terrorist attack of an airline’s aircraft while in flight CITATION Bak15 \l 2057 (Baker, 2015). Insecurity in aviation has been a problem that has triggered re-shaping of both modern and traditional and safety management strategies. Security threats like terrorism are indeed global issues. Insecurity in general has been a socioeconomic issue in the transport sector in general ever since the formulation of human civilization. Due to its impact on human life and economy in general, safety in aviation is indeed a contemporary issue that must be addressed CITATION Ost13 \l 2057 (Oster, Strong, & Zorn, 2013)According to Baker (2015), terrorism is one of the sindustry problems in aviation indusry whose evolution into a geopolitilossesroblem has led to major loses in aviation sector globally.
Most of the documentation in aviation safety mainly originated from engineering and technology. This is enough evidence to show that safety in the aviation industry has technical origin. That is the equipment used in handling facilities, as well as the operations and management of aircraft and personnel. There have been a number of significant improvements in terms of safety, however a lot still need to be done. This is a fact supported by the fact that, accidents still occur despite the noticeable improvements CITATION Ost13 \l 2057 (Oster, Strong, & Zorn, 2013). Safety problems call for proper investigations and research in order to find solutions based on the root causes. In their work on aviation safety, Oster, Strong, & Zorn (2013) stated that the main barrier to analysis of safety performance is lack of data and consistency in performance. Other researchers also used safety as a quality indicator to create a link between safety records kept by airlines and their financial records.
The aviation industries in every part of the world (apart from a few exemptions) have an obligation to design and implement Safety Management Systems (SMS) according to the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization CITATION Avi14 \l 2057 (Aviation Safety Regulation Review, 2014). The regulations are outlined in the Safety Management manual. The manual provides a description of various safety terms such as risks, compliance levels, stakeholder’s responsibilities, as well as the safety education system, and many more safety and security related measures. The main objective of SMS is to use policy systems that are transparent in order to arrest and manage all the security and safety threats. Global aviation safety is structured into two areas, namely: operational and structural components CITATION Lei13 \l 2057 (Leib & Lu, 2013). The structural component deals with the composition of the management system which are all physical in nature, like guidelines and policies, while the operational component entails the daily activities and the real operations going on in airports and airline firms CITATION Avi14 \l 2057 (Aviation Safety Regulation Review, 2014).
The main reason behind the establishment of safety management system is to come up with safety measures that ties various stakeholders in the aviation industry to carry out their duties in a safety-oriented manner, both at the airport and during flights CITATION Ost13 \l 2057 (Oster, Strong, & Zorn, 2013) . Safety measures an...