Practical experiences on incident reporting in maritime pilotage in Finland

Incidents and near misses are generally reported poorly in the shipping industry. Several researches have been conducted in order to find out the underlying reasons for poor reporting, and to provide methods for increasing the reporting activity. Nevertheless, major changes in reporting activity are not yet visible. An interview study was conducted among Finnish pilots in order to find out how active pilots are in their incident reporting and what issues affect their reporting activity. The interview study revealed that the pilots’ activeness in reporting incidents varies notably, which is rather uncommon in the maritime sector. The variability is manifested in the reporting activity and in the evaluation of occurrences that are to be reported as incidents. According to the interviewed pilots, the main reasons behind the varying reporting activity were that the pilots found it difficult to evaluate the occurrences that should be reported, they did not get feedback from their reports, and the reporting system did not always have a correct option for the incident the pilots wanted to report. In addition, the personal attitudes and characteristics of the pilots affected their reporting activity to some extent. Contrary to previous studies, blame culture was not considered to be a contributing factor. One reason for the varying reporting activity might also be that the maritime personnel have not perceived the significance of incident reporting and thus do not understand the positive consequences of reporting incidents. If the idea of incident reporting and continuous improvement is fully comprehended, defining what issues should be reported would not be hard.