Air-safety overhaul taps confidential incident data to prevent crashes

In a major air-safety initiative, US and European regulators are seeking to make voluntary incident reports more useful by ending strict confidentiality protections that typically have kept some important details shrouded. Under the change, analysts will be able to fuse what used to be separate data streams regarding the same event to create a more complete picture of safety lapses, close calls and other potentially dangerous slip-ups. But some airlines and pilot groups remain wary of possible privacy violations. The aim is to combine details from different sources to create comprehensive narratives of incidents that can be shared industrywide to prevent accidents. Proponents say the shift, which hasn’t been announced by authorities or airlines, represents the biggest advance in proactive aviation-safety management in roughly a decade. <br/>