BRUXELLES, BELGIUM – 13 September 2022.
European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) organized a physical Safety Conference event for the first time after COVID-19 pandemic in the Hotel nhow in Bruxelles. Our team participated the Day 1 and brought you a short review of the main topics.
This annual conference brought together many safety professionals over the globe with around 250 participants filling up the hall in the artistic hotel nhow in Bruxelles.
SAFE 360˚ 2022 is the one conference which strives to break down silos by examining the key safety issues in Europe from a cross-domain perspective. The conference includes the full spectrum of aviation stakeholders taken from up and down the technical and management chain.
The host of the conference was John Franklin, Head of Safety Promotion at EASA, with his witty and energetic moderating definitely made this conference enjoyable. Also special note for appreciation for video effects between the sessions.
John together with Luc Tytgat, director of Strategy and Safety Management, EASA opened the conference with their respective keynotes and welcomed everyone to this physical event .
John Franklin, EASA
High Level Panel – The EU Safety Landscape
First full session was a panel consisting of prestigious leaders in our industry such as Giancarlo Buono, Regional Director Safety and Flight Operations, Europe, IATA, Jasper Daams, Program Director, Royal Schiphol Group, Yannick Malinge, SVP & Chief Product Safety Officer, Airbus and Luc Tytgat, Director of Strategy and Safety Management, EASA. Panel was moderated by Erick Ferrandez, Head of Safety Intelligence and Performance, EASA. First we heard from Airbus perspective and Mr Malinge that Safety Landscape in EU is still under stress after COVID-19 pandemic which still has not completely finished in his opinion and he also pointed out on negative perception of aviation due to environmental concerns. Mr Daams talked about his experience at one of the busiest airports in Europe, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Airports still feeling the impact of COVID-19 as they cannot recover to full capacity and struggle with huge demands from the market. Also Mr Daams pointed out future concerns such as health of workers and environment. He is also on the side of integrating SMS with all stakeholders.
Mr Buono from IATA expressed his view where he believes that pilot trainings are not yet modernized and EU Safety is facing another challenge by entering new players in the domain of Air Mobility with a lot of new people coming in who have never been in the aviation industry. Finally Mr Tytgat concluded that EU Safety landscape is still upset (shortage of staff due to COVID-19 and Ukraine-Russia conflict). Also he mentioned that digitalization will come with security challenge which is also emerging as another safety concern. After the panel, EASA published a poll where over 70% of participants said that the biggest risk to EU Safety landscape in short-term is lack of qualified personnel at airports, ground handlings and airlines.
Flash Talk – What is Safety culture?
Next session was done by Colin Russell, Director of Safety, Lilium. It a very entertaining presentation, we have seen an energetic and skillful presenter Colin demonstrating the differences in understanding Safety culture. He made an intriguing comparison of full swimming pool of marbles (1×10 -9 normal color and unknown small number of red color) thus visualizing the probability of catastrophic event in the aircraft (probability taking red marble in the sea of normal marbles) demonstrating how every area of aviation can have its “red” marbles that are hazards. Colin captured the imagination of the audience with his style while still scoring the point where he wanted the most – showing how safety culture and safety mindset are two different things. Safety culture focuses on organization while safety mindset on a person. Understanding the difference and not blaming someone for a mishap but trying to understanding why -> makes us build trust which is the driving force for safety. This also reduces the number of red marbles in imagined swimming pool. Very good presentation by Colin!
D4S – Announcing the next phase
After the coffee break, we had an opportunity to hear about EASA’s initiative Data4Safety Program. Data4Safety (D4S) is a voluntary partnership programme that aims to identify systemic risks at EU level as well as their mitigations. Moderated by Erick Ferrandez, Head of Safety Intelligence and Performance, EASA with panelists Bert Bonke, Chairman Flight Data Working Group, ECA/VNV, Jim Pegram, Director Safety, Security and Compliance, Easyjet. The panelists discussed why its important to share safety data and how airlines have complete trust in this program which EASA would like to maintain.
Flash Talk – Integrated Safety and Security Management System
The final session of the day belonged to Mr Dragos Munteanu, Assistant Director Safety & Flight Operations, IATA Europe who gave a very good explanation of integrated management systems. Mr Munteanu showed how airlines face different kind of risks and manage various management systems such as SMS, QMS, SeMS, EMS (Environmental Management System), Enterprise Risk Management etc. All management systems have similar procedures with the same goal: to defend with its ultimate goal: Safety. Data is essential for all management systems as without it, the systems will be starved and not be able to give value. A common feature across SMS, QMS, SeMS is PDCA Cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act). Dragos pointed out examples where Safety is integrated with other systems such as conflict zones, cyber, new destinations, unruly passengers etc.
John Franklin wrapped up the Day 1 with a short keynote and invited the participants for a new round of sessions in Day 2.
