Flight safety is a laborious and complex process that involves 100 people on a daily basis at Eurocopter. A process for managing major incidents has been implemented at Eurocopter since 1987. The idea is to analyze each new type of incident in four key steps, irrespective of where the incident took place.

1 / THE GATHERING OF INFORMATION
The information concerning major incidents comes from operators, maintenance centers, and from the Quality and Flight Test departments at Eurocopter. It is the Technical Support Directorate which examines any incidents that occur during operations.

2 / PRE-ANALYSIS AND SELECTION
Each sector – Technical Support, Quality, and Flight Tests – performs a pre-analysis and a selection of the incidents it has examined according to different criteria. The incident is then included in an operation report, an inquiry report or an incident report and sent to the Technical Directorate at Eurocopter, which is responsible for analysis.

3 / ANALYSIS AND PLAN OF ACTION
An analysis of the selected incidents is performed and a plan of action is drawn up by the Major Incidents Board at Eurocopter, which meets at least twice a week.
During the analysis phase, a technical summary sheet describing the risk level, the likelihood of occurrence, the cause of the incident and most importantly the plan of action is prepared and distributed to the applicable sectors at Eurocopter.

4 / APPLICATION OF CORRECTIVE MAINTENANCE AND IMPROVEMENTS/MODIFICATIONS
Such measures are applied as a function of the results from the analyses made by the Major Incidents Board and can result in:
• Drafting new instructions (alert service bulletins, service letters, letters to repair stations, etc.) to be sent to customers, or modifying the documentation (e.g. improving work cards for maintenance operations).
• Studying improvements to the aircraft design.
• Last of all, realizing the modification itself – on the assembly line or as a retrofit – until it is available to the operator.