CAAM chief executive officer Chester Voo advised flying schools to identify the potential hazards and risks to their operations.

“This will alert flying schools across Malaysia to be proactive in their safety management.”

Voo said there were four runway incidents during training flights, of which three involved solo student training flights.

There was also a fatal accident during a recent “check flight” (flight to test aircraft, equipment or student), he said in a safety information (SI) notice sighted by FMT.

News reports said a Piper PA28 light aircraft crashed at Jalan Dr Nazrin Shah, Sungai Rokam, Perak, on Aug 1 at 8pm.

Flying instructor Fajim Juffa Mustafa Kamal, 52, from Semenyih, Selangor, was killed, while another, Din Fikri Zainal Abidin, 62, from Bukit Damansara, Kuala Lumpur, was injured.

A week later, a Diamond DA42 operated by HM Aerospace suffered a runway excursion (veering off the runway) at the Langkawi airport.

Both pilots did not suffer any injuries, though the runway was closed for more than an hour to extricate the aircraft and for safety inspections.

In March, another DA42 also skidded off the runway at Langkawi airport.

Voo said safety management in the aviation industry was a combination of two perspectives — proactive and reactive.

He said the reactive management approach was useful when dealing with technological failures or unusual events with the focus on compliance with the minimum safety requirements.

They are as follows:

• the level of safety is based on reported safety occurrences, with its inherent limitations, such as an examination of actual failures;
• insufficient data to determine safety trends;
• insufficient insight into the chain of causal and contributory events; and,
• the existence and role of latent unsafe conditions.

As for proactive management, Voo said it mitigated safety risks before they result in aviation accidents and incidents.

The components of a proactive safety management strategy may include:

• Unambiguous safety policy ensuring the senior management’s commitment to safety;
• Hazard identification and risk assessment using effective risk assessment methods;
• Safety reporting systems used to collect, analyse and share operational safety-related data;
• Competent investigation of safety occurrences with the sole purpose of identifying systemic safety deficiencies; and,
• Safety monitoring and safety audits aimed at assessing safety performance and eliminating problem areas.