The Line Operations Safety Audit - Does it Really Work?

Abstract

The Line Operations Safety Audit (LOSA) was developed by the University of Texas Human Factors Research Project in the 1990's as a means of observing threats and errors experienced by airline pilots engaged in normal day to day operations. It was postulated that by better understanding the nature of their management of risks, informed changes could be made to pilots' training and airline procedures to improve safety. This paper reviews the progress of LOSA over the past 10 years and its spread as a safety tool to other high risk industries such as medicine and rail.