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Transportation Research Part B 38 (2004) 369383

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A new airline safety index


Yu-Hern Chang a, Chung-Hsing Yeh
a

b,*

Department of Transportation and Communications Management Science, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan, ROC b School of Business Systems, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia Received 26 July 2001; received in revised form 1 April 2003; accepted 4 April 2003

Abstract This paper develops a new quantitative airline safety index based on comparative safety performance and eorts of airlines. The index essentially indicates an airlines overall safety level, relative to other airlines in the context of safety competitiveness and risk. An empirical study of four major airlines in Taiwan is conducted to illustrate how the index is obtained. To facilitate the use of the index as a safety benchmarking and management tool, four safety dimensions corresponding to safety-related organizational divisions of airlines and their associated safety measures are identied. With the use of linguistic terms, subjective assessments of qualitative safety measures via surveys are represented with fuzzy numbers. The relative weights of safety attributes are assessed via surveys using a pairwise comparison process. Based on the concept of optimality, a fuzzy multiattribute decision making approach is developed to obtain a safety index for each airline. The airline safety index helps airlines understand their relative safety strengths and weaknesses in terms of manageable safety attributes, and identify functional areas for safety improvement. 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Airline safety; Safety measures; Multiattribute decision making; Fuzzy assessment

1. Introduction Safety has always been a critical element to the business success of the passenger airline industry. Although fatal air accidents are extremely rare as compared to other transport modes, the rapid growth in the number of commercial aviation ights has resulted in aviations increasing exposure to risk (Gellman Research Associates, 1997). In the case of Taiwan, the passenger airline market has become a major transport service sector with an annual average growth rate of nearly
*

Corresponding author. Tel.: +61-3-99055808; fax: +61-3-99055159. E-mail address: chunghsing.yeh@infotech.monash.edu.au (C.-H. Yeh).

0191-2615/$ - see front matter 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0191-2615(03)00047-X

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20% since deregulation in 1987. With management focus more on prot than safety, the safety performance of Taiwanese airlines was not matching up to the rapid growth in passenger trac. The average accident rate per million hours own of Taiwanese airlines was 3.7 times higher than that in the world over the period of 19881997. This poor performance mainly resulted from the lack of positive safety culture and ineective safety management systems among Taiwanese passenger airlines (Chang, 1999). To respond to the demand of airline passengers for increased government involvement in airline safety, Taiwans civil aviation authority, Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), has set aviation safety as a top priority, in particular the safety issues relating to airline operations. With its category 1 rating assessed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in 1997, the CAA has since implemented a comprehensive safety oversight assessment program. While this program is implemented as a regulatory, self-auditing framework to oversee the safety activities of airlines at the operational level, it is not intended to be a safety benchmarking and management tool for airlines. To examine comparative safety levels among airlines for safety management and improvement purposes, an evaluation mechanism for measuring the overall safety of airlines is needed. To this end, this paper presents an evaluation approach for obtaining an airline safety index that can be used to indicate the comparative safety level among Taiwans major airlines. The index would help the CAA focus on the major safety weaknesses of individual airlines in specic divisions, thus facilitating its continuing implementation of the safety oversight assessment program, whose sustainability may be threatened by the extensive resources required. In addition, the index would provide useful information for the airlines to identify functional areas for safety improvement.

2. Evaluating airline safety To compare safety performance among airlines and to analyze changes in airline safety performance over time, the most commonly used and thoroughly studied measure of safety performance is accident and incident rates (Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics, 1992; Rose, 1992; Gellman Research Associates, 1997). Most of these studies use accident and incident data as a safety measure for examining the relationships between safety performance of airlines and related issues, such as carrier groups (Meyer and Oster, 1987; Barnett and Higgins, 1989; Oster et al., 1992), cost and revenue (Suzuki, 1998), deregulation (Oster and Zorn, 1989; Rose, 1992; Foreman, 1993), enforcement action rates (Gellman Research Associates, 1988), entrant carriers (Kanifani and Keeler, 1989; Oster and Zorn, 1989), nancial conditions (Rose, 1990), ight crew collaboration (Tjosvold, 1990), maintenance expense (General Accounting Oce, 1988), market forces (Karels, 1989), pilot gender (McFadden, 1996), pilot status (McFadden, 1998), prot (Borenstein and Zimmerman, 1988; Suzuki, 2000), safety management programs (Edkins, 1998), safety risk (Janic, 2000), service quality (Rhoades and Waguespack, 1999, 2000), and travel demand (Borenstein and Zimmerman, 1988). These studies are primarily of an empirical nature and address the issues related to safety deciencies. While the result of these studies may provide useful insights into the inuential characteristics of accident and incident data, there is no or little statistical evidence to suggest that individual airlines within peer groups can be distinguished by accident and incident rates (Barnett and Higgins, 1989; Oster et al., 1992). As such, safety rankings of airlines by accident and incident

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rates can be very unstable (Barnett, 1994). This is mainly due to the fact that airline accidents are extremely rare events. In addition, research evidence has suggested that airline accidents alone, while newsworthy, may not be useful in predicting the occurrence of a future accident (Rose, 1992; Gellman Research Associates, 1997). It is thus inappropriate to use safety performance as the only attribute to indicate and manage the overall airline safety across airlines. In fact, a safe ight involves the integrity of a complex chain of safety defenses. Accidents typically result from a combination of multiple inter-related sequential events and failures, in which human error is often involved. Due to normalized deviance of human performance, accident and incident data alone cannot reveal how the aviation fails and the human contribution to these failures (Maurino, 1999). As such, some studies have suggested the use of proactive analysis of airline safety in monitoring human-related safety factors (Braithwaite et al., 1998; Edkins, 1998; Maurino, 1999). The airline safety index to be developed is based on a comparative evaluation process that examines proactive safety measures among airlines. The index is a relative concept and is in accordance with the notion of competitiveness that incorporates three groups of measures (Buckley et al., 1988): (a) performance for representing the outcome of the safety eort, (b) potential for indicating capability to improve performance, and (c) process for reecting the management of potential to achieve performance. In this competitiveness context, the airline safety index implies both the end (safety performance measured by accident and incident rates) and the means (safety eorts) toward the end. Despite the fact that no system can assure safety, airline safety risk can be managed by eective countermeasures. The proactive safety measures used to calculate an airline safety index should ideally be risk-based. In this sense, the airline safety index can be regarded as risk indication. In this paper, we synthesize risk-based safety measures or attributes to obtain an airline safety index for each of Taiwans major airlines. These attributes are independent and compensatory of each other in terms of their contribution to the overall level of airline safety. Some of these attributes are qualitative measures, which require subjective assessments by human experts. Multiattribute decision making (MADM) has proven to be an eective approach for ranking a nite number of alternatives characterized by multiple conicting criteria (Hwang and Yoon, 1981; Olson, 1996). The most widely used theory in solving MADM problems is multiattribute utility theory (Keeney and Raia, 1993) or multiattribute value theory (MAVT) (Dyer and Sarin, 1979), with which a cardinal preference or ranking of the decision alternatives is generated. Among its broad range of applications, MAVT-based compensatory MADM has shown to be advantageous in transportation planning (Nijkamp and Blaas, 1994) and transport systems evaluation (Gomes, 1989; Chang and Yeh, 2001). However, conventional MADM models are inadequate for handling imprecise assessments made by human decision makers. Fuzzy set theory has proven to be a powerful modeling tool for coping with the subjectiveness and imprecision of human judgments (Bellman and Zadeh, 1970; Zimmermann, 1996). Amongst its wide range of applications, fuzzy set theory has shown advantages in modeling trac and transportation systems characterized by subjectiveness and imprecision (e.g. Teodorovic, 1994; Marchalleck and Kandel, 1995; Teodorovic, 1999). In the applications of MAVT-based MADM for evaluation and selection problems involving subjective judgments of the decision maker, fuzzy MADM has demonstrated its applicability in ranking decision alternatives such as transportation systems (e.g. Smith, 1993; Park, 1997; Yeh et al., 2000; Chang and Yeh, 2002). To obtain a

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cardinal value for each alternative, mainstream fuzzy MADM models need to carry out the process of comparing fuzzy numbers (Zimmermann, 1987; Chen and Hwang, 1992; Ribeiro, 1996). However, the comparison process remains a challenging issue, as it is not always straightforward and reliable. In this paper, we formulate the evaluation of airline safety as a fuzzy MADM problem that requires cardinal ranking. To obtain a quantitative airline safety index without the need of comparing fuzzy numbers, we develop an algorithm based on the concept of optimality. In subsequent sections, we rst discuss the proactive safety measures suitable for evaluating the relative safety level of Taiwans major airlines. We then present the fuzzy MADM approach to the evaluation problem. Finally we conduct an empirical study to measure and compare the overall safety of Taiwans four major airlines.

3. Safety dimensions and measures of Taiwans major airlines In the passenger airline industry, there is no universal agreement among researchers and practitioners about what exactly constitutes safety indicators (Gellman Research Associates, 1997). This suggests that airlines safety measures are context-dependent and should be selected to reect the operational environment investigated. For safety management and improvement purposes, safety measures to be identied for Taiwans airlines are classied into four safety dimensions. These dimensions correspond to organizational divisions of Taiwans airlines, involved directly in contributing to airline safety, including (a) management, (b) ight operations, (c) engineering and maintenance, and (d) eet planning (nance and property). Based on the notion of competitiveness and risk-based evaluation described above, the safety measures within each safety dimension are identied, as given in Table 1. This was achieved through comprehensive investigation and consultation with Taiwans aviation safety experts in
Table 1 Dimensions and measures used for evaluating safety levels of Taiwans major airlines Dimension C1 Management Safety measure C11 C12 C13 C14 C21 C22 C23 C24 Safety policy and strategy (fuzzy assessment via surveys) Management attitude/commitment (fuzzy assessment via surveys) Employee attitude/commitment (fuzzy assessment via surveys) Safety personnel rate (total number of ights/total number of safety personnel) Competence status of ight crew (fuzzy assessment via surveys) Compliance with aviation task procedures (fuzzy assessment via surveys) Training status of pilots (average training activities per pilot) Incident and accident rate (number of accidents per 100,000 departures)

C2 Operations

C3 Maintenance

C31 Compliance with maintenance task procedures (fuzzy assessment via surveys) C32 Training status of personnel (average training activities per worker) C33 Crew competence rate (total number of certicated technicians/total number of maintenance crew) C41 Average age of eet (years) C42 Aircraft types (number)

C4 Planning

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airlines, aviation authorities, and research institutions. These safety measures involve both quantitative and qualitative assessments, for which numerical data and fuzzy numbers are used respectively. These measures are independent of each other, thus suitable for use in an MAVTbased MADM model. In the context of competitiveness, the safety measures in Table 1 reect the capabilities and oerings of airlines in ensuring safety across safety-related divisions in their organization structure. These safety measures are relevant to safety concerns and are devoted to address the main causes of aircraft accidents under an airlines control: human error and mechanical failure. Human errors in aviation can be associated with operational personnel (such as pilots and mechanics) and management as well. As such, the human-related safety measures reect the status of human factors across safety-related divisions in safety management, crew resource management and maintenance resource management, thus corresponding to the countermeasures attempted to improve human performance in helping the airlines reduce the risk of an aircraft accident. Some researchers have regarded nancial stability of an airline as an important factor to safety performance based on the notion that nancial conditions may inuence safety investments (General Accounting Oce, 1988; Rose, 1990). In this study, we do not consider nancial conditions as safety measures for the airline safety index due to the facts that (a) empirical evidence has shown that there is no signicant relationship between nancial conditions and safety performance in terms of accident rates, except for smaller carriers (Rose, 1990), (b) consistent annual nancial data for safety investment is not available, and (c) safety measures used can reect safety investment levels across all organizational divisions concerned. The safety measures in Table 1 are controllable and manageable by the airlines, thus providing a comparative base for evaluating the overall safety of Taiwans major airlines. We briey discuss the safety measures within each dimension below. (1) Management (C1 ): This safety dimension involves the process of planning, implementing, and controlling of safety policy and strategy. C11 is concerned with the eectiveness of the safety management system put in place. The system is a practical mechanism for managing safety and responding to safety issues and events identied in operations (Pooley, 1999). Its success requires a positive safety culture that is achieved and maintained by everyone involved from the highest corporate level to the operational level. The safety culture can be measured by C12 and C13 . Management denes the safety culture of an airline as it has great leverage in aecting operational safety of the airline (ICARUS Committee, 1994). C12 is concerned with the attitude of airline managers toward safety, which is an important factor in assessing the overall safety of an airline (General Accounting Oce, 1988; Banfe, 1992; Edkins, 1998). C13 is related to employees attitude toward safety in the organization and their appreciation of the work. This reects how individual employees commit to the organizations objectives, and share the beliefs and values of the safety culture. A higher level of shared beliefs and values among employees may achieve standardized patterns of behaviors in team working, thus helping improve safety performance (Edkins, 1998). To reect an airlines commitment to ight safety, C14 measures the average number of safety personnel allocated to a ight. This measure indicates an airlines capability to maintain and improve safety performance. (2) Operations (C2 ): This dimension is responsible for operating aircraft safely. C21 is concerned with the experience, attitude and physical status of ight crew that may aect their professional performance on a ight. Flight safety is largely dependent on the professional conduct of the

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technical crew and cabin crew of the aircraft, which is responsible for the majority of accidents attributable to human error (General Accounting Oce, 1988; Abeyratne, 1998). The human factor problems relevant to ight crew that may adversely aect ight safety include ight crew fatigue, substance abuse in the workplace (such as alcohol, drugs and psychotropic substances), and poor coordination and communication of ight crew in the aircraft. C22 is a compliance measure that reects the eectiveness of implementing aviation task procedures for human error resistance and accident prevention. Statistical evidence of incidents and accidents or anecdotal evidence has shown that insucient training contributes to operational risk (Ford, 1997). Recognizing that most accidents are caused by human error, airline pilots are required to complete certain recurrent training each year (Air Transport Association of America, 2001). The implementation of more intensive training programs would help decrease the frequency of human error. As such, C23 is used to measure the average training activities per pilot. Due to the fact that the risk of accident for an aircraft is greatest during takeo and landing (Gellman Research Associates, 1997), C24 is measured by the number of accidents per 100,000 aircraft departures. (3) Maintenance (C3 ): This dimension is responsible for keeping aircraft in safe order. Maintenance tasks require cross-shift co-ordination of work within maintenance workers (Ford, 1997). To ensure a seamless continuity of work tasks, the eective implementation of standard task procedures is required. C31 is used to measure how the standard task procedures are carried out. Many incidents are resulted from human error and not from the maintenance procedure (McDonald et al., 2000). Training maintenance personnel can help reduce human-related mechanical problems (Ford, 1997). To reect how often maintenance workers are trained, C32 is used to measure the average training activities per worker. To be personally licensed, maintenance mechanics and engineers must have minimum levels of training and experience, and demonstrate their skills through various examinations. The competence of licensed technicians is believed to ensure quality of maintenance work that enhances safety. As such, C33 is measured by the percentage of certicated technicians in the maintenance crew. (4) Fleet planning (C4 ): This dimension is concerned with the risk potential of aircraft to safety performance. It is generally believed that with the same level of maintenance quality, equipment failure of older aircraft is more likely to occur (General Accounting Oce, 1988). As such, C41 , measured by the average age of aircraft eet, is used to reect the potential risk of an aircraft accident. In addition, the type and mix of aircraft in the eet may aect eet compatibility and increase maintenance requirements. The more the aircraft types, the more maintenance resources and expenditures are needed. With limited maintenance expenses available, high maintenance requirements may aect the capability of maintaining and improving maintenance quality. C42 is thus used to measure the number of aircraft types.

4. The fuzzy multiattribute decision making approach 4.1. The airline safety evaluation problem With the quantitative and qualitative safety measures identied in the previous section as evaluation criteria of a two-level hierarchy, we can formulate the evaluation of airline safety as a fuzzy MADM problem. The problem involves a set of m airlines (alternatives) Ai (i 1; 2; . . . ; m),

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which are to be evaluated based on a set of n safety dimensions (criteria) Cj (j 1; 2; . . . ; n). Each dimension Cj is broken down into pj safety measures (sub-criteria or attributes) Cjk k 1; 2; . . . ; pj , as given in Table 1. Assessments are to be given to determine (a) the weighting vectors W w1 ; w2 ; . . . ; wj ; . . . ; wn and Wj wj1 ; wj2 ; . . . ; wjk ; . . . ; wjpj j 1; 2; . . . ; n; k 1; 2; . . . ; pj , and (b) the decision matrices YCj fyki ; k 1; 2; . . . ; pj ; i 1; 2; . . . ; mg j 1; 2; . . . ; n and X fxij ; i 1; 2; . . . ; m; j 1; 2; . . . ; ng. The weighting vectors W and Wj represent the relative importance of n safety dimensions Cj (j 1; 2; . . . ; n) and pj safety measures Cjk (k 1; 2; . . . ; pj ) for the problem and their corresponding dimension respectively. The weighting vectors are obtained by using the pairwise comparison of the analytic hierarchy process (Saaty, 1980; Chen and Hwang, 1992), assessed by safety experts via surveys. The decision matrices YCj represent the performance ratings (yki ) of airline Ai with respect to each safety measure Cjk (k 1; 2; . . . ; pj ) of the corresponding safety dimension Cj . These performance ratings are given based on quantitative and qualitative assessments. While the quantitative assessments are straightforward based on the data available, the qualitative assessments require subjective judgments of safety experts to reect the degree to which each airline satisfy each qualitative safety measure. Linguistic terms have been found intuitively easy to use in expressing the subjectiveness and imprecision of the decision makers assessments (Zadeh, 1975; Zimmermann, 1996; Yeh et al., 1999b). To facilitate the making of qualitative assessments by aviation safety experts, a set of ve linguistic terms {Very Low, Low, Medium, High, Very High} is used. Each expert assesses the performance rating of each airline with respect to each qualitative safety measure by using one of these linguistic terms. Each linguistic term is characterized by a triangular fuzzy number for representing its approximate value range between 0 and 100, denoted as a1 ; a2 ; a3 , where 0 6 a1 6 a2 6 a3 6 1. a2 is the most possible value of the term, and a1 and a3 are the lower and upper bounds respectively used to reect the fuzziness of the term. To reect the fact that safety experts may have dierent perceptions of these linguistic terms, each safety expert denes the value range of these linguistic terms for his/her assessments. The decision matrix X fxij ; i 1; 2; . . . ; m; j 1; 2; . . . ; ng represents the performance ratings of airline Ai with respect to safety dimension Cj . While YCj (j 1; 2; . . . ; n) are given based on the assessments made on the airlines, the decision matrix X is constructed by aggregating the weighted assessments from lower-level safety measures of each safety dimension Cj by 0 Wj Y C 1 x1j ; x2j ; . . . ; xmj Ppj j ; j 1; 2; . . . ; n; k 1 wjk
0 (i 1; 2; . . . ; m) are the normalized decision matrices by where YC j yki 0 ; i 1; 2; . . . ; m; k 1; 2; . . . ; pj : yki q Pn 2 y i1 ki

The normalization process is required to allow a comparable scale for all safety measures, assessed by dierent measurement units. In (1), x1j ; x2j ; . . . ; xmj is a fuzzy decision vector in X , which is obtained from a normalized value function that multiplies the weighting vector Wj for its lower-level sub-criteria Cjk by the 0 . With the use of triangular fuzzy numbers, the corresponding normalized decision matrix YCj

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arithmetic operations on fuzzy numbers are based on interval arithmetic (Kaufmann and Gupta, 1991). Given the weighting vectors (W and Wj ) and decision matrices (X and YCj ), the objective of the problem is to rank all the airlines by giving each of them an overall airline safety index with respect to all safety dimensions. 4.2. The solution procedure A two-phase approach has been typically used to solve the fuzzy MADM problem dened above (Zimmermann, 1987; Chen and Hwang, 1992). In the rst phase, the fuzzy assessments with respect to all criteria for each alternative are aggregated with a value or utility function. The second phase ranks the alternatives by comparing their aggregated overall values, represented as fuzzy numbers. The main problem with this approach lies in the fact that the comparison of fuzzy numbers is not always straightforward and reliable. To avoid the unreliable process of comparing fuzzy numbers, we develop an algorithm based on the concept of optimality (Hwang and Yoon, 1981; Zeleny, 1982). In the context of MADM, the concept suggests that the most preferred alternative should not only have the shortest distance from the positive ideal solution (or the best alternative), but also have the longest distance from the negative ideal solution (or the worst alternative). This concept has been widely used in different decision contexts (e.g. Hwang and Yoon, 1981; Teodorovic, 1985; Athanassopoulos and Podinovski, 1997; Zeleny, 1998; Yeh et al., 1999a). This is mainly due to (a) its applicability in solving various practical decision problems, (b) its simplicity and comprehensibility, (c) its computational eciency, and (d) its ability to measure the relative performance of the alternatives in a simple mathematical form. In the algorithm developed, the concept is used (a) to transform the fuzzy decision matrix into a fuzzy singleton matrix (Zadeh, 1973), and (b) to obtain a preference index for each alternative. In existing MADM models, the criteria weights mainly serve as a channel through which dierent assessments of alternatives on the criteria can be aggregated. The decision matrix is weighted by multiplying each column of the decision matrix by its associated criteria weight. With the use of the concept of optimality, the overall preference index of an alternative is determined by its distance to the positive ideal solution and negative ideal solution. This distance is thus interrelated with the criteria weights (Zeleny, 1982) and should be incorporated in the distance measurement (Shipley et al., 1991). This is because all alternatives are compared with the positive and negative ideal solutions rather than directly among themselves. As such, in the algorithm developed we use the weighted Euclidean distance, instead of the weighted decision matrix often used in MADM models. With the weighting vector W and the fuzzy decision matrix X obtained by (1), the algorithm works as follows: Step 1: Normalize the fuzzy decision matrix by ,s m X xij2 : zij xij
i1

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Step 2: Obtain the relative rating of airline Ai with respect to each safety dimension Cj by j ) and a fuzzy comparing the normalized fuzzy decision matrix with a fuzzy maximum (Mmax j minimum (Mmin ) (Chen, 1985; Zadeh, 1998) respectively by
j uhj i supzij \ Mmax

and

j ulj i 1 supzij \ Mmin : j (Mmin )

The

j ) fuzzy maximum (Mmax j z zmin j z uMmax ; j zmax zj min

and the fuzzy minimum zj z uM j z j max j ; min zmax zmin


m [ zij : i1

are dened as 5

where zj max sup


m [ zij ; i1

zj min inf

For each safety dimension Cj , uhj i and ulj i in (4) represent respectively the highest degree of approximation of airline Ai s rating to the fuzzy maximum and the lowest degree of approximation of airline Ai s rating to the fuzzy minimum (Bellman and Zadeh, 1970). As such, uhj i and ulj i can be regarded as the degree to which airline Ai is the best airline and not the worst airline with respect to safety dimension Cj respectively. The degree of optimality (or preferability) of airline Ai over all other airlines with respect to safety dimension Cj is thus determined by uhj i ulj i ; i 1; 2; . . . ; m; j 1; 2; . . . ; n: 7 2 The matrix given in (7) indicates the relative rating of airline Ai , represented as a fuzzy singleton, with respect to each safety dimension Cj . Step 3: Determine the positive ideal solution A and the negative ideal solution A , representing the best possible and the worst possible results of the airlines respectively, by rij
; r2 ; . . . ; rn ; A r1 where A r1 ; r2 ; . . . ; rn ;

8 j 1; 2; . . . ; n: 9

rj supr1j; r2j ; . . . ; rmj ;

rj inf r1j ; r2j; . . . ; rmj ;

Step 4: Calculate the weighted Euclidean distances, between Ai and A , and between Ai and A respectively by " #1=2 " #1=2 n n X X 2 2 wj dij and di wj dij ; 10 di
j1 j1

where
rj rij ; dij dij rij rj ;

i 1; 2; . . . ; m; j 1; 2; . . . ; n:

11

Step 5: Obtain an overall safety index for each airline Ai (i 1; 2; . . . m) by d Si i : di di The larger the safety index, the better the safety level of the airline.

12

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5. Empirical study To illustrate the fuzzy MADM approach presented above, we examine the overall safety level of Taiwans four major passenger airlines in 1999, for which complete data was available. The four major airlines evaluated are China Airlines, Eva Air, Far Eastern Air transport, and TransAsia, which are denoted randomly as A1 , A2 , A3 , and A4 . 5.1. The survey A survey with structured questionnaires was conducted to ask the aviation safety experts in Taiwan to (a) weight the safety dimensions and safety measures respectively, and (b) assess the performance rating of airlines with respect to each qualitative safety measure in Table 1 independently. A total of 19 safety experts were selected and 17 eective responses (including 11 airline practitioners, 3 government ocials and 3 academic researchers) were received. The safety experts were asked to use a pairwise comparison process (Saaty, 1980) to assess the relative importance between the safety dimensions, and between safety measures of each safety dimension. Table 2 shows the result, which is the average of the weights given by 17 experts. It is noteworthy that these experts weighted the incident and accident rate (C24 ) less than other measures, as shown in W2 for the operations dimension. This reects a common view among these experts that the past accident record by itself is not a good indicator of the future safety performance. Another interesting observation is that these experts, particularly among expert researchers, consistently weighted human-related safety dimensions and measures more. This reects their shared perceptions of the inuential role that human factors play in aircraft accidents. These safety experts were also asked to assess the performance rating of four major airlines with respect to six qualitative safety measures in Table 1, using the term set {Very Low, Low, Medium, High, Very High}. Before making fuzzy assessments, each expert specied the value range for each term between 0 and 100, represented as a triangular fuzzy number, individually. As an illustration, Table 3 shows the value range specied by 3 experts (out of 17) for the linguistic terms used in their assessments. The performance rating of an airline on qualitative safety measures is the average of the fuzzy numbers assessed by 17 experts. Table 4 shows the result of fuzzy assessments of the four airlines, together with their performance ratings on quantitative safety measures for 1999, forming the decision matrices YCj (j 1, 2, 3, 4) for the problem. To reect the fact that a smaller value is preferred for the cost attributes,

Table 2 Weighting vectors for safety dimensions and safety measures Weighting vector W W1 W2 W3 W4 Weights (0.380, (0.267, (0.197, (0.391, (0.583, 0.286, 0.191, 0.143) 0.318, 0.209, 0.206) 0.232, 0.448, 0.123) 0.386, 0.223) 0.417)

Y.-H. Chang, C.-H. Yeh / Transportation Research Part B 38 (2004) 369383 Table 3 Representative value ranges of linguistic terms used in fuzzy assessments by experts Expert 1 2 3 Very Low (0, 0, 20) (0, 0, 30) (0, 0, 40) Low (20, 30, 40) (30, 43, 55) (40, 45, 50) Medium (40, 50, 60) (55, 60, 65) (50, 60, 70) High (60, 70, 80) (65, 72, 80) (70, 78, 85) Very High (80, 100, 100) (80, 100, 100) (85, 100, 100)

379

Table 4 Performance ratings of four major airlines Safety measure Management (C1 ) C11 C12 C13 C14 Operations (C2 ) C21 C22 C23 C24 Maintenance (C3 ) C31 C32 C33 Planning (C4 ) C41 C42 A1 (63, 72, 78) (74, 85, 89) (64, 74, 80) 2.78 (65, 76, 83) (58, 68, 76) 4.82 118.90 (77, 90, 93) 4.80 0.49 6.70 5 A2 (79, 93, 95) (82, 97, 98) (77, 90, 93) 2.50 (80, 94, 95) (84, 100, 100) 4.78 70.00 (80, 93, 95) 3.24 0.10 5.49 3 A3 (78, 92, 94) (84, 99, 99) (78, 91, 93) 1.76 (79, 92, 94) (76, 88, 91) 4.00 41.60 (80, 92, 94) 4.03 0.21 5.20 3 A4 (68, 79, 83) (77, 90, 93) (70, 80, 84) 4.75 (67, 78, 84) (67, 75, 81) 2.42 66.70 (62, 72, 79) 2.29 0.05 2.50 2

such as C14 , C24 , C41 , and C42 , we used the reversal of the original data for these measures multiplied by 1000 to constitute the decision matrix X by (1) and (2). 5.2. Safety evaluation of Taiwans major airlines With the data in Table 4, the decision matrices X and YCj can be constructed by using (1) and (2) respectively. By applying the algorithm given as ((3)(12)) to these decision matrices individually, for each airline we can obtain an individual safety index for each safety dimension respectively and an overall safety index for all safety dimensions as a whole. Table 5 shows the result and the corresponding ranking order. The airline safety index given in Table 5 may help the CAA focus its direct oversight eorts on the major safety weaknesses of individual airlines in specic safety-related divisions. For example, ight operations of airline A1 , and management and maintenance divisions of airline A3 require more intense surveillance.

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Table 5 Safety index and ranking of four airlines Safety dimension Management (C1 ) Index Ranking Operations (C2 ) Index Ranking Maintenance (C3 ) Index Ranking Planning (C4 ) Index Ranking Overall Index Ranking A1 0.598 3 0.529 4 0.736 2 0.430 4 0.485 4 A2 0.712 1 0.686 2 0.755 1 0.557 2 0.693 1 A3 0.685 2 0.692 1 0.629 3 0.510 3 0.688 2 A4 0.511 4 0.541 3 0.531 4 0.706 1 0.566 3

The result in Table 5 provides the airlines with information about the relative safety level of individual airlines in terms of both overall and individual safety dimensions. Although airline A2 has a dominating position in overall safety competitiveness, it does not have competitive advantages in all safety dimensions. This comparative status also applies to other airlines. This result demonstrates the conicting nature of safety dimensions and suggests that single dimensions alone, cannot capture the notion of overall safety. The result can thus help an airline identify its relative weaknesses in safety-related areas of concern for safety improvement. For example, airline A1 requires improving its operations in all safety-related areas, especially safety management, ight operations and aircraft conditions. Despite being the best performer, airline A2 can put more eorts on ight operations and aircraft conditions to enhance its safety level. To match up the safety level of the best performer, airline A3 can improve its eet planning and maintenance operations. While maintaining its safety strength in eet planning, airline A4 needs to improve its operations in all other areas, particularly management and maintenance.

6. Conclusion Evaluating the overall airline safety level among airlines requires measuring both safety performance and safety eorts. To evaluate airline safety of Taiwans four major airlines, we have identied four safety dimensions and their associated safety measures in the context of safetyrelated divisions of Taiwans airlines. To handle both quantitative and qualitative assessments of multiple safety measures, we have formulated the evaluation of airline safety as a fuzzy MADM problem that requires cardinal ranking. An algorithm has been developed to obtain a quantitative airline safety index for each airline in terms of both overall and individual safety dimensions.

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Based on the concept of optimality, the algorithm has its merits in handling fuzzy numbers and criteria weights. The airline safety index can help the aviation authority better manage its safety oversight eorts. In addition, the index can help an airline identify its relative safety strengths and weaknesses in terms of its safety-related divisions, thus providing a guideline for the airline to maintain or improve its safety level in a manageable manner. In particular, the index would help the CAA focus on the major safety weaknesses of individual airlines in specic divisions for its continuing implementation of the safety oversight assessment program. With its simplicity in concept and computation, the algorithm presented has general application in solving practical MADM problems involving fuzzy assessments. Acknowledgements This research was funded by the National Science Council of Taiwan, ROC, under Grant NSC90-2811-E006-007. We are grateful to the Taiwans Civil Aeronautics Administration, four airlines and 17 airline safety experts involved for providing assistance in problem formulation and data collection. We also thank Professor Frank A. Haight, the Editor-in-Chief, and anonymous referees for their valuable comments and advice. References
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