First, reporting pilots are guaranteed a response to their ASAP report stating the corrective actions to be taken. Of course, intentional or illegal actions cannot receive such incentives. Most previous incident reporting systems have been obtained in open-ended text format. In these systems, the pilot provides a few demographic items, then simply describes what happened in his or her own words. It is then up to a coder to determine how to classify the event.
Classification is based entirely on the written description of the crew member.
Some descriptions are detailed, but others are minimal. Captain Sharon Jones, in her doctoral dissertation, verified that reporters in incidents can provide a wealth of categorical information about why events happened, and that this information strongly relates to good versus bad outcomes. Although her dissertation was based on ATC-related incidents, we feel such an approach will have a payoff in the airline operational setting. The ASAP form is designed to get at why an event happened in a systematic manner, not just what happened. We feel this information should give more proactive guidance, and in a more efficient manner than systems currently in use.