Free screening tool

Airfield risk assessment tool

Seventeen questions about how your airfield actually operates. You get a weighted priority score, the areas that contribute most to it, and the specific answer patterns that we think warrant separate attention. It takes about eight minutes and it runs entirely in your browser.

Who it is for

Anyone responsible for a smaller aerodrome, airstrip, gliding site or air-sports field — board members, operations managers, club officials and landowners.

What you get

A priority score out of 100, an advisory band with a recommended next step, every section with the points it contributed, any attention flags your answers raised, and your two largest single gaps.

What it is not

It is not a risk assessment, a risk acceptance, an ALARP determination or a compliance check. It is a prioritisation aid that tells you where a real assessment should start.

Before you start

Answer for how the site operates in practice, not how the paperwork describes it. The result is only as useful as that honesty. Where you do not have the information, choose “Not known” rather than guessing — the model treats uncertainty as risk-sensitive and will tell you when missing evidence is itself the finding.

Do not enter occurrence reports, aircraft registrations, named individuals or confidential documents anywhere on this page. Your answers are scored in your browser and are not transmitted unless you choose to send them at the end.

0 of 17 questions answered

Section A · 27 of 100 pointsTraffic demand and operational mix

How much traffic the site has to absorb, and how many different kinds of activity can be moving at once.

Q1 · Capacity and simultaneity · 8 pointsHow often does local activity reach a level where traffic is simultaneous, or the circuit and arrival area become difficult to self-manage?
Q2 · Activity mix · 8 pointsWhich traffic and activity types can be airborne or moving in the same local airspace or manoeuvring area at the same time?
Q3 · Trainees and visitors · 6 pointsHow controlled is the exposure from trainees, solo students, and visiting pilots unfamiliar with local practice?
Q4 · Movement data quality · 5 pointsHow reliable are the movement, activity and simultaneity data used to manage the airfield?
Section B · 27 of 100 pointsAirspace, radio and traffic-information barriers

Whether you can rely on knowing where other traffic is, and on being heard by it.

Q5 · Local procedures and interfaces · 8 pointsHow clear and workable are the local circuit, entry and exit, airspace-interface and self-separation procedures?
Q6 · Traffic communication · 9 pointsHow dependable is local traffic communication?
Q7 · Electronic conspicuity · 5 pointsWhat electronic conspicuity or visibility support is available and actually used for the relevant traffic mix?
Q8 · PPR and pre-arrival briefing · 5 pointsHow controlled are PPR, pre-arrival briefing and traffic-flow information for visitors?
Section C · 18 of 100 pointsManoeuvring area, surface and local environment

The physical movement area, its surface, and what surrounds it.

Q9 · Active-area segregation · 8 pointsHow effectively are runway, grass, taxi and apron operations segregated and controlled during active flying?
Q10 · Inspection and access control · 5 pointsAre runway and manoeuvring-area condition, FOD and wildlife, lighting and marking, and access controls inspected and acted on?
Q11 · Weather, terrain and surface · 5 pointsHow well are local weather, surface and terrain limitations recognised and managed?
Section D · 22 of 100 pointsPeople, special operations and organisational control

Who is on site, how special operations are co-ordinated, and how local rules are kept current and enforced.

Q12 · Competence and briefing currency · 6 pointsHow current are local competence, radio and seasonal or abnormal-operation briefings for pilots, instructors, activity leaders and ground personnel?
Q13 · Co-ordination protocol · 7 pointsWhere activities interact, is there a formal, named and actually used co-ordination protocol?
Q14 · Emergency and external interfaces · 4 pointsHow prepared are the interfaces with emergency services, military or third-party traffic, and local emergency response?
Q15 · Action tracking and review · 5 pointsAre measures, owner, due date, evidence of completion and periodic review documented?
Section E · 6 of 100 pointsChange and unresolved-hazard screen

Two screening questions. These are handled separately from the score: an open serious hazard or an unassessed material change cannot be offset by strong answers elsewhere.

Q16 · Material change · 6 pointsHas there been, or is there planned, a material change to airspace or service, activity mix or volume, procedures, infrastructure, or operating hours?
Q17 · Unresolved hazard screen · Screening question, not scoredIs any known serious or unresolved hazard, recent major occurrence or near miss, or barrier failure present?

Nothing is sent when you calculate. The scoring happens in your browser.

Your result

Answer all seventeen questions above, then choose Show my result.

Send this to NorthSky

Optional. Your result is already on the screen and you can print it without sending anything. If you would like us to look at what your answers raised, send them across and we will come back to you.

We will tell you which of your flagged areas we think are worth taking further, what the concrete hazard scenarios behind them usually look like at a site like yours, and what a full documented assessment would involve. If nothing in your result warrants paid work, we will say that too.

Sending this stores your answers, your score, the band and any flags alongside your contact details, so that we can read the result before we reply. We keep it for up to 24 months and you can ask us to delete it at any time. The privacy notice sets out exactly what is stored, on what basis and by whom.

NorthSky — Airfield Risk Assessment submissions

Common questions

Is this a risk assessment?

No. It is a screening and prioritisation aid. A risk assessment identifies specific hazards and scenarios for your site, places each one for probability and consequence, describes the barriers that act on it, documents the residual risk and the reasoning behind accepting it, and is reviewed and signed by the people accountable for the operation. This tool does none of that. What it does is tell you which areas a real assessment should look at first.

Are my answers stored?

Not unless you choose to send them. The seventeen questions are scored in your own browser and no answer leaves the page. If you fill in the form at the end and submit it, your answers, your score and your contact details are then sent to NorthSky and stored, and the privacy notice explains what happens to them.

Why does "Not known" count as the worst answer?

Because in operational risk work, not knowing whether a barrier holds is not the same as knowing it holds. If you cannot say whether traffic on your frequency is reliably heard, you cannot rely on that frequency as a barrier. Scoring uncertainty as neutral would let a site with no evidence look the same as a site with good evidence. On seven of the questions, answering "Not known" also raises a separate flag, because missing evidence on those points is itself the finding.

Can I put the result in a formal document?

You can reference it as a screening input, and print it for your own records. You should not present it as a risk assessment, a risk acceptance, an ALARP determination or evidence of compliance, because it is none of those things. If you need something a board, a landowner, an insurer or an authority will accept, that requires a documented site-specific assessment.

How were the weights chosen?

They reflect which factors recur as the actual drivers of risk in the airfield assessments NorthSky has carried out in Norway, which is why airspace and communication barriers and traffic mix carry more weight than, for example, surface condition. The weighting is a considered starting point rather than a calibrated statistical model, and it will be revised as the evidence base grows. The current model version and its status are shown with every result.

Does a low score mean the airfield is safe?

No. A low score means this screening found little in the areas it asks about. It asks seventeen questions, and no seventeen questions cover an aerodrome. It also takes your answers at face value — if the paperwork says one thing and the operation does another, the tool scores the paperwork.

Scope of NorthSky’s work

NorthSky provides operational risk decision support and advisory guidance. Outputs do not constitute regulatory certification, aerodrome licensing, compliance verification, or formal authority determinations.

How this tool scores

Each of the seventeen questions carries a fixed weight, and the weights total one hundred. Your answer on a question is scored from zero to three, and the points that answer costs you are the question’s weight multiplied by that score and divided by three. The section totals are the sums of their questions, so a section that covers more of the operation moves the result more than a narrow one. Attention flags are evaluated separately from the score: a flag is raised by a specific answer pattern and is never offset by strong answers elsewhere, which is why a flag can raise your advisory band on its own.

Model version 0.9. Proposed weighting, not yet calibrated against completed assessments. The weighting reflects the patterns that recur in the assessments NorthSky has carried out for Norwegian airfields, and it will be revised as that evidence base grows. If you disagree with how your site scored, that disagreement is a useful starting point for a discussion — tell us where you think the model is wrong.

Related

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