Hazard vs Risk in Aviation: The Difference That Decides What You Do

A hazard is a condition, object or activity with the potential to cause harm. A risk is the assessed outcome of that hazard: how bad the consequence would be, combined with how likely it is to happen.

The hazard is what exists. The risk is what it might cost you. "Standing water on the runway" is a hazard; "runway excursion during landing, severe, unlikely in these conditions" is a risk statement derived from it. One describes the world, the other describes a judgement about the world.

This is not academic tidiness. The two need different responses, and a register that mixes them produces entries nobody can act on.

Safety risk management under 14 CFR Part 5 runs in a fixed order: identify hazards, then analyse and assess the risk arising from them, then control it. Each step needs the previous one stated properly. You cannot assess the severity of "crew fatigue" as a bare phrase, because severity depends on the outcome you think it leads to.

In practice most weak hazard registers fail in the same way: they list risks as hazards, or list hazards so broadly that no assessment is possible. "Weather" is not a hazard you can assess. "Thunderstorms forecast at the destination within the arrival window" is.

The test is whether the entry names something concrete enough that two people would assess it the same way. If it does not, it will produce an inconsistent register, and inconsistency is what an auditor notices first.

Risk is conventionally assessed on two axes: how severe the credible worst outcome would be, and how likely that outcome is. A risk matrix is just a way of combining those two judgements into one classification that routes the decision.

Both axes are required, and dropping either produces a predictable failure. Severity alone treats every catastrophic-but-remote scenario as urgent and exhausts the organisation on the improbable. Likelihood alone lets frequent-but-trivial events crowd out the rare and serious.

The matrix itself is not the answer, and it is worth being blunt about that: it is a communication device that makes a judgement explicit and comparable. It does not make the judgement correct.

Controls act at different points, and which point depends on whether you are addressing the hazard or the risk. You can remove the hazard, which is always preferable and rarely available. You can reduce the likelihood that it leads to the outcome. Or you can reduce the severity if it does.

Refusing a contaminated runway removes the hazard. Increasing landing distance margins reduces likelihood. Briefing a go-around policy reduces severity when it happens anyway. All three are legitimate; they are not interchangeable, and a register that has not separated hazard from risk tends to reach for whichever is easiest to write down.

ALARP - as low as reasonably practicable - is the standard that usually applies once controls are chosen: not zero risk, which is unavailable, but risk reduced until further reduction would be grossly disproportionate to the benefit.

A hazard register that reads as hazards, assessments that show severity and likelihood separately, controls traceable to the risk they address, and evidence the assessment was revisited when something changed. The last is the one most often missing: a risk assessed once and never reviewed is a document, not a control.

Your general operations manual should say who assesses, who accepts residual risk, and at what classification a decision escalates. A matrix with no named owner is a picture.

Navlyt does not ship a hazard register or a risk matrix - its dedicated SMS module is on the roadmap, and the current status is stated plainly here.

What it does today is read the procedures you have written and map them clause by clause against FAA Part 135 requirements, quoting your own wording back where something is missing or has drifted. If your risk-assessment process is described in your manuals, that description is exactly the text it examines - see Navlyt for FAA Part 135 compliance. AI-assisted analysis is a starting point for your compliance officer, not a replacement for their judgement.