Occurrences

The Occurrences page at https://rotorlab.app/occurrences is the administrative half of your safety program: what happened, the hazard somebody spotted, the action they took, and who closed it out. The Crash Analyzer says what a log shows; this records what was done about it, which is what an insurer, a client audit, or a chief pilot asks to see.

An occurrence is not a crash. Most of what a safety program records damages nothing: a near miss, a link drop, a battery that puffed on charge, a member of the public walking into the area. Those are exactly the events worth writing down. An occurrence stands on its own and optionally names an aircraft and a pilot; it can equally be about the operation itself, a procedure that did not work or a site that was unsafe.

RotorLab does not decide what is reportable to an authority. That determination depends on jurisdiction, operation, and judgment that belongs to you; the record stores your determination and your filing reference.

The overview#

The page opens on two tabs, Overview and Every occurrence.

The figures across the top count reviews overdue, occurrences past the review point, occurrences still open (with the median time they have been open), occurrences open with no corrective action recorded, occurrences you assessed as reportable and how many of those were filed, and the total on record.

Requires review lists the occurrences that are open past a review date you recorded against them, or open longer than 30 days, oldest first. Each says whether a corrective action has been recorded.

By category, By severity and By aircraft rank what is on record. Severity records the outcome, not fault.

Occurrences, month by month plots twelve months. The solid segment of each bar is the major and critical occurrences, so a total that climbs while the solid part does not is usually a programme where people started reporting rather than one getting worse.

Occurrences are deliberately never counted per pilot. Ranking people by the number of events they reported suppresses reporting, which costs more than any figure it would produce.

The occurrence page#

Open an occurrence by its summary, or with Open on its card. The page carries its standing and severity, when and where it happened, the aircraft and pilot, your reportable assessment and any authority reference, and the four boxes of the record side by side: Narrative, Immediate action, Hazard identified and Corrective action.

All four are shown whether or not they are filled in. An empty corrective-action box is marked, because an occurrence with no action recorded against it has changed nothing about the operation, and a card that hid itself when empty would hide exactly that.

Below them, the flight the occurrence was recorded against (with the conditions recorded at the time, and whether the analyzer identified a crash signature in its log) and the photographs marked for inclusion in the report.

Report (PDF) produces the occurrence report. Edit opens the record on the board.

Filing an occurrence#

Press Record an occurrence. The form takes:

• What happened: one line, plainly, up to 200 characters.
• Category: airprox, bird or wildlife, control link loss, flyaway, forced landing, hard landing, battery thermal, component failure, ground incident, public or property, airspace deviation, procedure deviation, injury, damage, or other.
• Severity: none, minor, major, or critical. Deliberately about outcome, not about blame.
• Occurred date and Site.
• Aircraft and Pilot: both optional.
• Reference: your own case number.
• Narrative: what happened, in order.
• Immediate action: what was done at the time.
• Hazard identified: what this told you about the operation.
• Corrective action: what changed so it does not happen again. A record without one is flagged on its card with "No corrective action recorded."
• Reportable: Not recorded, Yes, No, or Not yet determined. Your determination, never RotorLab's.
• Authority reference: the regulator's case or filing number, if you filed.
• Status, Review by date, and a Closing note.

The list supports a text search and a status filter, and the counters at the top total what is overdue, past review, open, and closed.

Review and closure#

Status moves through Open, Investigating, Actions pending (you know what to do and have not done it yet, which is the state most safety logs actually sit in), Closed, and Withdrawn (filed in error, but it happened).

An open occurrence ages in public:

• Open: shows how many days it has been open.
• Past review: open more than 30 days.
• Overdue: open past the Review by date you set.

Closed records do not age; a closed record is not overdue however long it took. Closing stamps who closed it and when, and reopening clears the stamp. Occurrences open past their review point are also what the daily notification sweep names, and the Ops Dashboard occurrences tile counts open, ageing, and overdue records with the worst first.

Deleting a safety record is restricted to administrators and asks for confirmation; the prompt suggests Withdrawn instead when the event was real but the record was mis-filed.

Photos#

Press Photos on any occurrence to attach images of the damage, the site, or the conditions. Location and camera metadata is removed from every image on upload. Each photo takes a caption and an Include in report tick; nothing is included in the report unless you tick it, so an insurer receives the frames you chose rather than every picture from the day.

The occurrence report#

Report (PDF) produces a document for one occurrence: the record itself with names resolved (aircraft, pilot, owner, who reported it, who closed it), the linked flight's details where one is on record (including whether the analyzer detected a crash and the weather conditions), and the photos you ticked, with their captions.

Related#

• Crash Analyzer
• Ops Dashboard
• Pilot Logbook
• Public Reporting