The safety standard SAE ARP 4761 "Guidelines and Methods for Conducting the Safety Assessment Process on Civil Airborne Systems and Equipment" describes techniques for safety engineering of aviation systems, and thus is often used in association with SAE ARP 4754 "Certification Considerations for Highly-Integrated or Complex Aircraft Systems" and/or other safety standards.

The safety life cycle is split up into the following, all integrated with the wider engineering life cycle.

• Functional Hazard Assessment (addressing hazard identification and preliminary risk analysis)
• Preliminary System Safety Assessment (analysing the contribution and interaction of the subsystems to system hazards)
• System Safety Assessment (assessing the results of design and implementation, ensuring that all safety requirements are met)

Techniques used in one or more of the above phases include Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), Dependency Diagrams (DD), Markov Analysis (MA), Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Failure Modes and Effects Summary (FMES) and Common Cause Analysis (CCA) (consisting of Zonal Safety Analysis (ZSA), Particular Risks Analysis (PRA) and Common Mode Analysis (CMA)).

A extremely large worked example is provided, drawing a large number of techniques and life cycle phases together.