LOSA, Ramp LOSA, GOSA and NOM
If you are looking for a LOSA-style safety programme for the ramp, ground handling or airport operations, this page explains the family it comes from, and how Normal Operations Monitoring makes the ramp safer.
Why aviation safety looked at normal work
Most of what we know about safety comes from accidents and incident reports, which show the rare bad day. From the mid-1990s, airlines and researchers began watching normal flights instead, to see how crews handled the challenges of everyday flying. The same idea now applies to ground safety: watch normal turnarounds and see where the safety margins are thin, before an aircraft is damaged or someone is hurt.
- Threat and Error Management (TEM)Safety as managing threats, errors and undesired states, and how teams manage each one. It is the model behind LOSA.
- LOSA: the Line Operations Safety AuditTrained peers observe normal flights from the jump seat, with no jeopardy, using TEM. LOSA is described in ICAO Doc 9803 and FAA Advisory Circular 120-90.
- Ramp LOSADeveloped by the FAA with industry: non-jeopardy peer observation of ground operations, recording threats, errors and how they are managed.
- GOSA: the Ground Operations Safety AuditA team of psychologists and human factors specialists at a major Australian airline took the same approach to its ramp, with trained ramp observers watching normal turnarounds.
- NOM: Normal Operations MonitoringGOSA developed further at UNSW Aviation in partnership with several airlines, as part of a PhD: more than 1,300 observed turnarounds, and what goes right as well as what goes wrong.
- NOMIC RampNOM for any airline, ground handler or airport: the observer course, the coding guide, the phone app, the report and dashboard, and a collaborative to compare with others.
What stays the same as LOSA
- Trained peer observers: experienced ramp people the crews trust
- Joint support from management and the workforce, in a signed agreement
- Voluntary, de-identified and non-jeopardy: never used for discipline
- Threats, and how the team manages them, on normal days
- Every observation checked before it counts in the results
What NOM adds for the ramp
- Codes built for the turnaround: loading, baggage and freight, equipment, pushback, and working on foot around the aircraft
- Variations rather than errors: where work as done differs from work as imagined, with no blame assumed
- Enablers and good practice: what helps the turnaround go well, not only what goes wrong (Safety-II)
- Reference data from 1,302 observed turnarounds to compare with from the first round
- Data for your safety management system: hazards seen in normal work, and a re-measure that shows whether changes worked
- A self-service model: your own people run it with the course, the tool and the templates, so it costs a fraction of a consultant-led programme and you can run it every year
Questions people ask
Is NOMIC Ramp a LOSA?
It is built on the same principles and the same Threat and Error Management model, redeveloped for the ramp. NOM is not LOSA, and NOMIC is independent of ICAO, the FAA and The LOSA Collaborative.
Is it a ground safety audit, like ISAGO?
No. An audit checks whether an organisation meets a standard on the days it happens. NOM shows how work is really done on normal days, across many turnarounds, and sits alongside your audits. See how it fits.
Who is it for?
Airlines, ground handling companies and airports that want to improve ramp safety: fewer aircraft damage events, injuries, load errors and ramp delays.
Does it replace our safety management system?
No. NOM is not an SMS. It feeds yours with data from normal work.
See it for yourself
Read how it works, see the app, look at the sample dashboard and sample report, or read where NOMIC comes from.