Fuzion Safety’s Subscriber Spotlight series highlights different subscribers of Fuzion Safety’s web-based platform for safety management systems (SMSs). The series aims to recognize our various valuable subscribers and the different ways the SMS platform is used.
This edition of Fuzion Safety’s Subscriber Spotlight features responses from Aaron Fettig, Aviation Safety Specialist at University of North Dakota (UND), a four-year college with a strong liberal arts foundation. Located in Grand Forks, ND, UND is home to the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, which offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in a variety of aerospace disciplines, including Aviation, Air Traffic Management, Aviation Safety and Operations, Unmanned Aircraft Systems Operations, Atmospheric Sciences and Space Studies. UND’s aviation program is accredited by the Aviation Accreditation Board International (AABI) and offers FAA-approved curricula for airplane and helicopter flight training. UND employs roughly 300 pilot employees and conducts flight training for approximately 1,500 flight students.
How do you use Fuzion Safety’s web-based platform for SMSs? UND uses Fuzion Safety’s SMS platform to collect and analyze safety reports as part of our Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP).
What do you consider the most useful part of the SMS platform? Fuzion Safety’s SMS platform’s forms and taxonomy are fully customizable, allowing us to capture data valuable to UND and access that data efficiently to analyze safety trends.
Please identify a recent safety issue or problem you identified in your data: UND recently noticed an increase in reports of traffic conflicts at non-towered airports in the local area and was able to identify specific problem areas based on tracking recommended by our Event Review Committee (ERC).
Please explain how you mitigated the issue or problem: With feedback from our ASAP reports, a change to UND’s Safety Policies and Procedures was made to standardize certain procedures in the local area to reduce the number of traffic conflicts, specifically in cases when IFR aircraft are conducting instrument approaches into local airports with heavy VFR traffic.
