Introduction

1.1 Background

With the increase in residents’ income, the number of people who choose to travel by air continues to rise. But at the same time, safety has become the first choice for travelers, focusing on the attention of the whole society. The loss of connection to Malaysia Airlines (MAS) in 2014 has attracted the attention of the whole society. Safety issues have become the prerequisite and guarantee for the healthy and orderly development of the civil aviation industry, the source and motivation for the sustainable development of civil aviation enterprises, and are closely related to the lives of passengers (Marušić et al., 2009).

In 2001, the International Civil Aviation Organization ICAO required member states to start building and implementing a safety management system (SMS), and vigorously advocated the development of “safety management”. The civil aviation industry also followed closely, taking safe flight as a core task and building a “system safety” idea to promote the development of a safety management system. Continuously improving the level of flight safety management and ensuring the continued safety of flight are key issues in the development of the civil aviation industry.

  • research question

This research attempts to solve the following problems:

  • What are the risks of privacy in the aviation safety management system?
  • How to rank these risk factors according to risk?
  • How can airlines improve flight safety?

1.3 Research aims and objectives

This study aims to identify and classify various uncertain factors that affect flight safety risks, and combine the actual operating status of airline flights to finally determine an index system to measure flight safety risks. The purpose is to discover in advance the relevant unsafe problems in the normal flight operation process, and then through for weak issues, appropriate safety management measures will be taken to further avoid unsafe incidents such as flight accidents or flight incidents. In general, indicators are not only a direct manifestation of the airline’s flight safety status, but also the specific characteristics of each system to be evaluated. Therefore, the establishment of a flight safety assessment index system is an important prerequisite for carrying out airline flight safety risk assessment.

Literature review

2.1 SMS research

Developed countries have realized the limitations of traditional safety management methods early on, and have continued to explore and research, and at the same time guide theory into practice, and have achieved good results. At the end of the last century, Reason (1990) proposed the REASON model. Scholars, including Debrincat, Bill & Clark (2013) and Li，Harris & Yu (2008) have further proved that the REASON model can be used as an effective method and tool for the analysis and investigation of various aviation accidents.

Debrincat, Bill & Clark (2013) pointed out that according to the REASON model, the occurrence of accidents has a series of incentives, including the failure of effective implementation or defects in the various systems, supervision, and management aspects of the program design, and no problems or hidden dangers in the organization have been found. Licu et al., (2007) proved that problems at all levels exist for a long time and continue to evolve on their own. When the problem passes through the protective nets at all levels, it will eventually show up in the form of personnel violations. But investigating the root cause, the problem has already existed at the stage of organizational factors.

Subsequently, related institutions and scholars have set their sights on the safety management system (SMS) and launched in-depth explorations. In 2009, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)（2009） clearly defined the safety management system (SMS) as a tool, a method, and a means to systematically organize and manage safety tools. Xx proved that as a systematic and complex management system, safety management covers diversified and comprehensive content, including safety policies, risk management, safety assurance, and safety promotion.

It specifically includes organizational structure, respective rights and responsibilities, safety culture, Implementation procedures, etc. The International Pilots Association (ALPA) has a high evaluation of SMS, calling it a “model” for ensuring the safety of civil aviation and improving the social and economic benefits of the civil aviation industry (FAA, 2011). As a result, the International Civil Aviation Organization mandates that all Contracting States must implement SMS in the civil aviation industry to enhance the effectiveness of civil aviation safety management.

Studies, such as Winjield (2016) and Liqiong (2008), agree that Canada has made a significant contribution to the development of SMS. In addition to the aforementioned first definition of SMS on a global scale, Canada has also formulated corresponding regulations and procedures and implemented them in the safety management of the civil aviation industry. xx believes that SMS is a comprehensive system program for the safety of the civil aviation industry, and a complete program formed by the organic combination of various safety-related tasks. Therefore, ICAO (2009) pointed out that when formulating SMS regulations and procedures, it clearly proposed to integrate various resources such as technology, finance, manpower, and equipment.

From 2005 to 2008, Canada’s large airlines and maintenance organizations have completed the construction of safety management systems. According to the research of McEntire (2001) and Arroyo & Galiana (2015), the basic characteristics of the safety management system established by Transport Canada include mandatory requirements for the establishment of SMS in all areas of air transportation; emphasis on organizational culture construction and employee participation enthusiasm in SMS construction The important role of SMS; to delineate the responsible party of SMS.

In addition, other countries have also launched research on the SMS framework. According to Reason (1987), the United States proposed that SMS consists of four elements in 2006, including: safety management policy system, risk prevention system, various resource implementation assurance systems, and safety promotion. At the same time, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has also defined the concept of SMS, and proposed SMS from a strategic level. It believes that SMS is a standardized system. In the process of improving civil aviation safety management, this standard must be strictly followed.

Ensure the personal safety of passengers and ensure the healthy development of airlines. The International Civil Aviation Organization (2009) pointed out that in the process of implementing SMS, experts and scholars with rich experience are required to participate in it. The Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority（CASA） first proposed the establishment of SMS for airports in 2000. Based on the establishment of advanced SMS management experience in the United States, Italy and other countries, the SMS established by the Australian Department of Transport covers 10 aspects including safety culture construction, risk management process, risk control measures, accident and incident investigation. Among them, safety culture is the basis for establishing SMS.

2.2 Flight safety research

Research on flight safety has always been a hot topic in the academic field. Scholars at home and abroad treat flight safety from different perspectives

Do a lot of research. Catalyurek et al., (2010) and Brissaud et al.,(2011) used the dynamic event tree method to analyze flight safety and reliability. Janic (2000) used two methods of causality analysis and probability analysis to evaluate the safety of the entire civil aviation system. Ahmadi & Soderholm (2008) used the event tree analysis method to evaluate airline flight safety on the basis of fully considering the cost and benefit of airlines. Guimei & Shengguo (2011) took the aircraft’s heavy landing phenomenon as the research goal, and used the machine learning method of support vector machine to carry out the risk control research of heavy landing phenomenon. Shen et al., (2005) used the over-limit events of the aircraft during the take-off and landing stages as evaluation indicators, and used the analytic hierarchy process to evaluate flight safety.

From the perspective of the impact of flight environment on flight safety, Richardson et al., (2014) expanded the safety margin by studying the impact of wind shear on the flight envelope, and combined various statistical information describing random processes to provide a set of Comprehensive metrics to quantify flight safety. Bobylev et al., (2010) proposed a mathematical model for evaluating the safety separation of aircraft wakes under the premise of considering the generation of front aircraft wakes and weather conditions, and verified the model through experimental results. Calculation of the wake characteristics and safety distance value of the aircraft tail during landing.

It can be seen from the above literature that research on flight safety has always been a hot issue in the academic world. At present, academic research on flight safety can be roughly divided into the following two categories. One type is to study the flight envelope, safety margin, and wake of the aircraft during flight, and to improve the safety of flight as much as possible from the perspective of optimizing the flight path of the aircraft. The other is, from the perspective of airlines’ strengthening of safety management and the construction of safety management system (SMS), it is carried out for a certain aspect of risk management research.

It can be seen that the current problems of the above two types of research are reflected in two aspects. One is the unity of the research object; the other is the lack of targeted systematic research on flight safety risk management, leaving research for this research. gap. This research will proceed from multiple perspectives to carry out systematic research on flight safety risk management, which is the main research direction in the field of civil aviation safety, and is also an important guarantee for effectively improving safety management and realizing continuous safety.

Methodology

3.1 Research philosophy

This study will use empirical research methods, and the research philosophy of this article is positivist philosophy. Empirical research is research carried out for the theoretical hypothesis proposed or to test the theoretical hypothesis (Giannoni, 2010). The content of this article is the index of different flight modes to pilots’ flight risks, so this study aims to use the mathematical empirical research methods in empirical research to collect data to analyze the relationship between different flight modes and pilot flight risks. The research data in this study will be collected from the survey participants.

3.2 Research methods

Quantitative analysis is an important research method that uses mathematical empirical research to find answers to questions. Quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis are one that focuses on the quantitative research and analysis of things and the other that focuses on the research and analysis of matter (Mayring, 2001). This study aims to explore which flight modes have potential safety hazards for pilots, and also need to evaluate the safety hazard indexes of different flight modes. Therefore, this study will use quantitative analysis methods to analyze big data to obtain general laws. This stiudy will analyze the relationship between the variables with a quantitative analysis method to determine the impact of different flight modes on the flight risk of pilots. Qualitative analysis is suitable for analyzing why a specific flight mode poses a safety risk to flight, but it cannot help accurately determine the relationship between different variables.

3.3 Research strategy

This study will use questionnaires to collect data. This data collection will be in the form of questionnaires and invite civil aviation safety management experts, senior pilots, aircraft maintenance experts and other experts in the field of civil aviation to use expert scoring methods to form a score evaluation table for each evaluation index, and then the researchers will add Statistics collation. Finally, the risk index of different flight modes to flight is obtained. Researchers will cooperate with aviation bureaus and airlines to conduct online questionnaire surveys. Online questionnaire surveys have the advantages of low cost, high efficiency, wide survey scope and convenient data statistics.

3.4 sampling

This study will use the purpose of sampling method to draw samples, which according to the needs of the research to select specific participants to participate in the research. Since the object of this study is aviation flight, only those practitioners with professional knowledge or experience in the aviation industry can evaluate the risks of different flight modes. The information they provide can guarantee the accuracy and validity of the data. In this study, the online questionnaire survey will last for half a month, aiming to collect questionnaires from more than 120 people. A certain amount of data collection time can ensure the completion rate of the questionnaire and increase the return rate of the questionnaire.