Ensuring safety in aviation is paramount, and SAFA Ramp Inspection is a vital safety assessment program for foreign operators to monitor safety compliance through ramp inspections on their aircraft.
In this guide, we will explore why SAFA ramp inspections are vital, who is responsible for conducting them, what tools and checklists are used, and how findings are addressed. By the end of this post, you will have a complete understanding of the process and importance of SAFA ramp inspections in maintaining aviation safety.
The substantial growth in air travel has created a major challenge for many countries in ensuring their airlines comply with ICAO requirements as per the Chicago Convention. To maintain confidence in the aviation system and protect the interests of European citizens living near airports or traveling on third-country aircraft, the EU recognized the need to enforce international safety standards within its borders. This is accomplished through the implementation of ramp inspections on third-country aircraft landing at airports in EU member states.
“Third-country aircraft” is officially defined as an aircraft that does not operate under the authority of a Member State within the European Community.
The Directive 2004/36/EC provides a harmonized approach for the effective enforcement of international safety standards within the European Community by standardizing the rules and procedures for ramp inspections of third-country aircraft landing at airports within the Member States.
The primary objective of a SAFA ramp inspection is to assess compliance with ICAO standards as per the Chicago Convention.
SAFA ramp inspections offer several key benefits:
SAFA stands for Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft and is a vital program aimed at maintaining aviation safety standards.
The Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft (SAFA) program was launched in 1996 by the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) to complement ICAO audits. It primarily involves on-site inspections of aircraft at airports, often known as ramp inspections, to ensure compliance with ICAO standards. The EU SAFA program is now contained within the EU Ramp Inspection Program.
In 2012, The EU Ramp Inspection Program replaced the original EU SAFA Program and has two major components:
Operators licensed by EASA Participating States and inspected by other EASA Participating States are checked against EU Standards; those inspections are referred to as Safety Assessment of Community Aircraft (SACA) inspections. All other inspections use ICAO Standards and are commonly known as Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft (SAFA) inspections. In addition, each ICAO contracting State should perform ramp inspections on operators licensed by them, such inspections are called Safety Assessment of National Aircraft (SANA) inspections.
SACA (Safety Assessment of Community Aircraft) ramp inspections: SACA ramp inspections performed by an EASA Member State on aircraft used by operators under the regulatory oversight of another EASA Member State. These inspections take EASA requirements which are at least equal, but often more stringent than ICAO standards as the regulatory reference.
SAFA (Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft) ramp inspections: SAFA ramp inspections performed by non-EASA Participating States on any aircraft and ramp inspections performed by EASA Participating States on an aircraft operated by an operator under the regulatory oversight of a non-EASA Member State. These inspections take ICAO standards as the regulatory reference.
Note: Non-EASA Participating States are all Non-EASA Member States that have entered into a working arrangement with EASA. You can find the current list of Participating States engaged in the EU Ramp Inspection Program on the EASA website.
EASA is responsible for coordinating the RAMP inspections program. Its main tasks are:
SAFA ramp inspections are conducted by authorized inspectors. These inspections are generally unannounced and can be conducted at any time of the day or night.
Inspection covers various aspects, such as pilot licenses, onboard documents, compliance with procedures by flight and cabin crew, safety and emergency equipment, onboard cargo, and the technical condition of the aircraft is assessed through maintenance records and physical inspection.
A ramp inspection can be started as soon as practicable, such as when the aircraft is fully parked and its on the chock, with engines shut down, and anti-collision lights turned off. Usually, two inspectors come to inspect the aircraft, and the tasks can be divided between them.
Before commencing a ramp inspection, inspectors usually introduce themselves to the pilot-in-command of the aircraft or, in their absence, to a member of the flight crew or the most senior representative of the operator. When it is not possible to inform any operator representative, or when no such representative is present in or near the aircraft, the general practice should be to wait until such a representative becomes available. However, in such cases, the exterior inspection of the aircraft may be conducted before the representative arrives at the aircraft.
The inspector will inform (where applicable) staff of possible hindrances due to the inspection task.
Any unnecessary contact with passengers should be avoided by inspectors and the inspection should not interfere with the normal boarding/disembarking procedures.
Oversight authorities of the Member States engaged in the SAFA Program choose which aircraft to inspect. Some authorities carry out random inspections while others try to target aircraft or airlines that they suspect may not comply with ICAO standards.
When the flight crew doesn’t cooperate or refuses an inspection without a valid reason, the competent authority should consider preventing the aircraft from taking off. In such cases, the responsible authority must inform the operator’s competent authority as soon as possible. A safety report could be filed to inform the Participating States. Valid reasons to allow the operator to depart without an inspection, unless there are clear safety concerns, may include:
To ensure the harmonization and standardization of SAFA Ramp Inspections, the guidance materials on SAFA Ramp Inspections offer clear instructions to inspectors conducting these inspections. These guidelines are primarily based on Standard and Recommended Practices (SARPs) defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
An aircraft inspection should stay within the standard scope of a walk-around inspection. Inspection tools, such as cameras, should be used solely for gathering evidence. Opening access panels and wheel well bay doors is prohibited unless it becomes necessary to trace the source of a leak, in which case it should only be done after consultation with and assistance from the crew.
A standard walk-around inspection is described below and should generally be completed in no more than 10-15 minutes for narrow-body aircraft and a maximum of 20-25 minutes for larger wide-body aircraft.
SAFA inspectors use a standardized checklist encompassing 53 inspection items during ramp checks.
The ramp inspection checklist contains 53 items. Of these,
If you would like to learn more about each item on the checklist and get details about what inspectors actually check, please refer to the comprehensive SAFA checklist.
When there isn’t enough time or enough manpower to check everything on the checklist, inspectors should focus on the items they believe are most important for safety based on their training and experience. For example, a noise certificate is not as important to safety as ensuring that mass and balance documents are filled out correctly and calculations are accurate. The previous ramp inspection results and the age of the aircraft should also be taken into consideration.
Ramp inspectors should understand the key differences between SAFA and SACA inspections. For example, they should be aware that ICAO SARP does not mandate carrying NOTAM on board, but does require flight crew awareness of details relevant to the flight. While EASA regulation requires the NOTAM to be carried on board (electronic versions are allowed).
SAFA Ramp Inspector’s privileges refer to the specific inspection tasks that a SAFA Ramp Inspector is authorized to perform. These privileges are determined based on the inspector’s training, experience, and qualifications, typically including their background as a commercial pilot license/airline transport pilot license (CPL/ATPL) holder, an aircraft maintenance engineer license (AML) holder, or a cabin attendant.
A Ramp Inspector can be a CPL/ATPL holder, an AML holder, or a cabin attendant. Former cabin crew may require additional training on cabin-related MEL items before they are considered qualified to inspect safety items in the cabin.
It is the SAFA ramp inspections program policy not to delay an aircraft except for safety reasons.
A delay of the flight might be justified for safety reasons, such as whenever non-compliances are detected and either need a corrective action before departure or need proper identification/assessment by the operator, for example, if:
Alcohol tests should be carried out only on flight crew and cabin crew assigned operational duty, during ramp inspection. As per the ramp inspection manual, an Alcohol test should be preferably carried out at the beginning of the ramp inspection.
The alcohol test involves two parts: an initial test and a confirmation test when the initial result is positive. If both tests show positive results, it’s considered a CAT 3 finding. There should be at least a 15-minute waiting period between the initial and confirmation tests. During this time, the crew remains on duty, but inspectors must make sure they don’t eat, drink, or put anything in their mouths to prevent any residual alcohol from affecting the confirmation test. If a crew member doesn’t cooperate during this waiting time, it’s treated as a positive result.
The confirmation test should be performed at least 15 minutes but not more than 30 minutes after the completion of the initial test.
In case of a positive confirmation test, a CAT 3 finding should be raised under item E01.
Each State is entitled to decide the way alcohol testing will be carried out. Alcohol testing is fully integrated in the EU Ramp Inspection Program and performed by ramp inspectors or by other officials being part of the inspection team, or stand-alone alcohol testing managed and performed by other officials.
A finding is a non-compliance with the relevant standards. For each inspection item, 3 categories of possible deviations from the standards have been defined. The findings are categorized according to the perceived influence on flight safety.
The three categories of findings are as follows:
When considering the findings established during a ramp inspection, Category 2 (significant) and Category 3 (major) findings require the highest attention when it comes to the need for rectification.
It is important to note that any other safety-relevant issues identified during a SAFA inspection, although not constituting any findings, can be reported as General Remarks (Cat G) under the relevant inspection item. For example: missing life jackets for flights conducted entirely overland; or an electrical torch is missing or unserviceable during a flight conducted entirely in daylight.
The findings should be categorized according to the list of PDFs. In the SAFA PDF list, the description, categorization, and reference to the applicable standard are given. Although the list of PDFs is as complete as possible, it cannot cover all possible deviations that may occur. The SAFA PDF list is intended to be used by the inspector to guarantee a common description and categorization of findings.
In those cases where there is no appropriate PDF, the inspector should, based on his proficiency and the impact on aviation safety, make a sound judgement into which category the finding needs to be placed. The ramp inspection tool allows findings to be entered by the user, these findings are called User-Described Findings (UDFs). These UDFs will be monitored by EASA periodically and after evaluation may become part of the existing PDF list. Therefore the PDF list will be updated periodically.
Please note that “defects within limits, but not detected or recorded” should not be considered technical non-compliance.
Following a SAFA ramp inspection, specific actions are taken based on the results of the inspection and the categorization of findings. These actions are important to maintain aviation safety and ensure compliance with international standards. There are three classes of action: class 1, class 2, and class 3.
After each SAFA inspection, Class 1 action is mandatory, which involves sharing information about the results of the inspection, regardless of whether any findings were identified or not. This includes a verbal debriefing and the issuance of the Proof of Inspection (POI) to the aircraft pilot-in-command. In cases where the pilot-in-command is unavailable, another member of the flight crew or the operator’s most senior representative will receive this information.
Category 2 and 3 findings, which are considered critical and major safety concerns, require written communication. This communication ensures that both aviation authorities and operators are aware of these important issues.
A class 3 action follows a category 3 finding which is considered to have a potential major effect on the safe operation of the aircraft. This requires that corrective actions need to be taken by the operator before flight.
The class 3 action is further divided into 4 sub-actions:
The Ramp inspection tool is the backbone of the Ramp Inspection Program. It is the centralized database which is managed and maintained by EASA.
Each participating state uploads its reports to this tool, making them accessible to all other states. The information in the database is confidential and shared only with other participating states; It is not accessible to the general public. The database can be accessed through a web-based application by all aviation authorities of the participating states.
Operators and their Aviation Authorities (NAAs) can register online to that database; obviously, the access is limited to ramp inspection reports on their own aircraft. Since the user management is delegated to the local Aviation Authorities, these authorities need to have obtained access to the database before the operators can register themselves. Once the operator and/or the NAA has access, any follow-up information on the inspection can be uploaded to the database; this lowers the burden of the administrative workload considerably.
PDFs stand for Pre-Described Findings. They are a standardized set of descriptions used to categorize and report findings identified during the inspection process. Each PDF includes a detailed description of the finding, its categorization (Class 1, 2, or 3), and the applicable reference to the relevant ICAO or EASA standard. This information provides inspectors with a clear framework for documenting findings and allows for easy interpretation of inspection reports by aviation authorities and operators. The list of PDFs is periodically updated to reflect changes in regulations and to incorporate new safety concerns.
There is a unique identifier that is assigned to each Pre-Described Finding (PDF). This code is called a PDF code and is used to track the finding and to associate it with the relevant inspection report. You can find this code in the PDF list.
Minimizing SAFA findings is crucial for maintaining aviation safety and compliance. To minimize SAFA findings, it’s essential to maintain a proactive approach to aircraft maintenance and adherence to international safety standards.
Here are some effective strategies to minimize SAFA findings:
By implementing these strategies and taking specific actions to address common areas of SAFA findings, operators can significantly minimize SAFA findings and improve their overall safety performance.
