Regional Airline Line Operations Safety Audit

Regional airline operations globally have expanded over the past
decade for various reasons, including filling gaps left by legacy
carriers who have reduced services on unprofitable routes,
opportunities provided through other cost based market
rationalisations, and the introduction of new and more capable
regional type aircraft. Very little formal research has been done
in Australia or overseas to assist with the development of safety
models and tools for regional airline operations. Regional Express
(REX) is a relatively new airline that was created by merging two
separate and culturally different airline entities. After a post
start-up initial settling in period, REX needed a new tool to
further develop safety-based auditing for its newly combined flight
operations department. The Line Operations Safety Audit (LOSA)
offered through the University of Texas LOSA Collaborative,
provided an effective tool for this purpose. Around the time REX
was reviewing its need in this area, the LOSA Collaborative was
confirming an interest in conducting research with regional
airlines. The LOSA Collaborative wished to obtain data from
regional airlines to add to its LOSA Archive database in order to
move toward making the database more representative and the LOSA
tools more relevant for use in the regional airline environment.
The LOSA Collaborative set out to attract three regional airline
participants to add their data through the LOSA process. Regional
Express was successful in attracting funding under the Australian
Transport Safety Bureaus Aviation Safety Research Grants Program to
undertake the LOSA process. Completion of this project has added to
the expansion of the LOSA database to include regional airline
data. This report describes the LOSA process as it applies within
the regional airline context of REX and the reported outcome types
specific to the LOSA methodology, process, and tools. Regional
Express is one of the first regional airlines globally to
participate in a LOSA program.