Description

Absolute safety is generally an unachievable and very expensive goal. Therefore the concept of acceptable safety has been adopted in risk-bearing industries, including aviation. The term "acceptable risk" describes an event with a probability of occurrence and consequences acceptable to the society, i.e. the society is willing to take or be subjected to the risk that the event might bring. It is the role of the safety regulatory authorities to translate the society expectations and perceptions into a qualitative or quantitative target level of safety.

“The acceptable level of safety expresses the safety goals of an oversight authority, an operator, or a services provider. From the perspective of the relationship between oversight authorities and operators/services providers, it provides the minimum safety objective(s) acceptable to the oversight authority to be achieved by the operators/services providers while conducting their core business functions.” (ICAO Annex 11, Attachment E).