EUROCONTROL voluntary ATM incident reporting (EVAIR) safety bulletin 20

The first EUROCONTROL voluntary ATM incident reporting (EVAIR) safety bulletin of 2019 makes use of some 13,000 ATM reports from aircraft operators and air navigation service (ANSPs) for the period 2013 - 2017 to produce both European and global air traffic management (ATM) safety statistics and trends.

Some of the main events reported for the 2013 - 2017 period include:

continuing proliferation of RPAS in 2017 which affect final approach most, but also begins appearing at higher altitudes;
location of GPS outages closely linked to politically disrupted areas and the majority of the affected states failed to issue NOTAMs;
184 cases of false RAs caused by hybrid surveillance were reported between December 2012 and the end of November 2017;
decrease in persistent laser interference problems as the majority of States prohibited the use of laser devices against aircraft or vehicles;
decrease in call sign confusions in 2017 and how EUROCONTROL’s Call Sign De-Confliction Tool (CSST) is helping airlines;
upward trend of ‘Air-Ground communication’ in 2017 and decrease in ''ATC clearance/instructions'' problems.

The participants in the EVAIR mechanism took great strides forward in 2017, reducing the number of days spent investigating reports which took on average 15-20 days while keeping the high level of the investigation quality.