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How occurrence reporting works

An aviation safety occurrence is an event or circumstance relevant to the safety of aviation operations. Reporting helps the responsible organisation and competent authority identify hazards, assess risks, and take appropriate follow-up action. Examples may include a runway incursion, a loss of separation between aircraft, or a technical failure that affected or could have affected a flight. These are illustrations, not a complete list of legally reportable events.

International and European context​

ICAO Annex 19 provides an international framework for safety management, including safety reporting and the use of safety data. ICAO Annex 13 concerns aircraft accident and incident investigation and related reporting by States to ICAO. ECCAIRS 2 can also support that authority-to-ICAO reporting flow; it is separate from an individual's public occurrence report. States implement applicable requirements through their own legal and operational arrangements. In the European Union, Regulation (EU) No 376/2014 governs the reporting, analysis and follow-up of civil aviation occurrences. The rules that apply to your report depend on the relevant jurisdiction and authority.

The reporting process​

  1. An individual or organisation identifies an occurrence within the scope of its applicable reporting rules.
  2. The reporter selects the competent authority and submits the information available, using an option permitted by that authority.
  3. The report reaches the authority's reporting environment. The authority examines it and determines how to process and follow up the information.
  4. Where appropriate and permitted, the authority may share the report with another authority in the system. The reporter's account remains linked to the authority selected for that account.

Submitting a report does not itself mean that every described event is classified in the same way or triggers the same action. The competent authority decides how to handle the information it receives.

After submission​

If you provide an email address when reporting without an account, you receive an email with a link to a read-only copy of your submitted report. It does not let you edit the report. Editing an already submitted report requires registration. See What happens after submission.