On April 12, 2022, the GAJSC Charter was updated and the name changed from General Aviation Steering Committee to General Aviation Safety Committee.
GAJSC Charter: April 2022PURPOSE
As part of the Safer Skies initiative, launched in 1998, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the general aviation (GA) community jointly developed a goal of reducing GA fatal accidents. The General Aviation Joint Safety Committee (GAJSC) uses a data-driven, consensus-based approach to analyze safety data to develop specific interventions that will mitigate the root causes of accidents. The GAJSC focuses on proactively assessing data to identify new emerging issues and threats to general aviation safety, analyzes them, and develops mitigation strategies to address and prioritize safety issues to prevent accidents.
OBJECTIVE
The GAJSC is a primary mechanism for government/industry cooperation, communication, and coordination on GA safety issues. The GAJSC’s activities will focus on reducing GA accidents through non-regulatory, proactive safety strategies. Our current goal is to reduce the GA fatal accident rate per 100,000 flight hours by 10 percent over a 10-year period (2019-2028) to no more than 0.90 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours by 2028 with a mid-point review in 2023.
MEMBERSHIP AND STRUCTURE
The GAJSC is co-chaired by the FAA and the aviation industry. The FAA Co-Chair is the Director of the Office of Accident Investigation and Prevention (AVP). The industry Co-Chair position is held by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). AOPA and EAA serve as Co-Chair and Vice Co-Chair on a three-year rotating basis. The GAJSC combines the expertise of many key decision-makers across different parts of the FAA, various government agencies, and several GA associations. FAA participating organizations include the Air Traffic Organization, Flight Standards Services, Aircraft Certification, the Office of Airports, the Aviation Weather Division, and AVP. The other federal agency members are NASA and the National Weather Service. Industry participants include the Aerospace Medical Association, Aircraft Electronic Association (AEA), AOPA, EAA, General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), National Air Transportation Association (NATA), National Business Aviation Association (NBAA), National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI), Society of Aviation Flight Educators (SAFE), and a representative of the aviation insurance industry.
The Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA), European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), Flight School Association of North America (FSANA), the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Soaring Society of America, and Transport Canada Civil Aviation are observers to the GAJSC.
The Safety Analysis Team (SAT), formed by the GAJSC, will perform in-depth analysis of a particular accident category and report back to the GAJSC with mitigations for prioritization and inclusion into a GA Safety Plan. The in-depth analysis may be conducted using project-specific working groups that the GAJSC establishes on recommendation by the SAT.
TASKS
The GAJSC plenary meets quarterly to focus limited government/industry resources on data-driven risks by identifying mitigation strategies that are:
- Voluntary commitments
- Consensus-based
- Data-driven
- Implementation-focused