Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/2034 of 6 October 2020 supplementing Regulation (EU) No 376/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the common European risk classification scheme (Text with EEA relevance)

This Regulation sets out the common European risk classification scheme (ERCS) for the determination of the safety risk of an occurrence.

For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions shall apply: (1) ‘European risk classification scheme’ or ‘ERCS’ means the methodology applied for the assessment of the risk posed by an occurrence to civil aviation in the form of a safety risk score; (2) ‘ERCS matrix’ means a grid made up of the variables described in Article 3(3) which serves for the illustrative representation of the safety risk score; (3) ‘safety risk score’ means the result of the risk classification of an occurrence by combining the values of the variables described in Article 3(3); (4) ‘high-risk area’ means an area where an aircraft impact would cause numerous injuries, result in a high number of fatalities, or both because of the nature of the activities in that area, such as nuclear or chemical plants; (5) ‘populated area’ means an area with clustered or scattered buildings and a permanent human population, such as city, settlement, town, or village; (6) ‘life changing injury’ means an injury reducing the person’s quality of life in regard to reduced mobility or reduced cognitive or physical ability in daily life.

1 The ERCS is set out in the Annex.

2 The ERCS shall address the safety risk of an occurrence and not its actual outcome. The assessment of each occurrence shall determine the worst likely accident outcome that the occurrence might have led to, and how close to that accident outcome the occurrence was.

3 The ERCS shall be based on the ERCS matrix composed of the following two variables: (a) severity: identification of the worst likely accident outcome that would have resulted if the occurrence under assessment had escalated into an accident; (b) probability: identification of the likelihood of the occurrence under assessment to escalate into the worst likely accident outcome referred to in point (a).

This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union. It shall apply from 1 January 2021.