Developing Airport Safety Performance Indicators and Index

An indicator system is an effective way to monitor ongoing safety status. Current aviation safety measurements account for many qualitative technical and lagging indicators. Conversely, quantitative and leading indicators have only a tiny proportion. This research added more quantitative leading indicators and reviewed them to harmonize lagging and leading indicators to measure airport safety and provide an index. The South Korean national gate, Incheon International Airport’s indicators, were applied as primary data to verify this research practically. Then, examples from International and national authorities were reviewed and extracted for use. Fifty-five safety specialists participated in the focus group discussion and three rounds of the Delphi survey. Finally, 51 sub-indicators were newly chosen. After this process, weights for each indicator could be assigned using the AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) to provide an integrated index. The result of the simulation with newly added indicators in the past five years (2020-2022) reliable trend showed in indicators and integrated index. Moreover, this allows monitoring the status of the details of indicators and holistic insight. This study considered that it is more suitable for a single company or service provider to use it according to the exact situation than in a macro- and general-purpose at the country or regional level.