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Cooperation and assistance key to enhancing safety in ICAO’s Europe and North Atlantic region

Delivering his keynote address to the 27th ACI Africa/World Conference in Port Louis, Mauritius, on the theme of ‘bold leadership in a time of change’, ICAO Council President Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu highlighted sectoral growth, commercial space flight and emerging unmanned and remotely-piloted aircraft technologies as some of the key challenges facing contemporary civil aviation leaders and planners.

Pointing to ICAO’s Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP) and the European Regional Aviation Safety Group (RASG-EUR) mechanisms, Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu underscored that the foundations and targets for safety-focused cooperation are already in place.

MONTREAL and TALLINN – Addressing the ICAO Regional Safety Management Symposium in Tallinn, Estonia, the Secretary General of the UN specialized agency for civil aviation stressed the need to enhance cooperation and assistance in order to address safety issues affecting States in its Europe and North Atlantic (EURNAT) Region, an area that covers 56 countries stretching from Greenland to Kamchatka.

“The average effective implementation of ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) by EURNAT States is approximately 75%, which is more than 10 points above the current global average,” remarked Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu. “However, your region accounts for 32% of the global accident total while accounting for only 25% of global traffic. These figures reflect a complex portrait of safety capability and performance and point to the need for ever closer collaboration. Compliance with ICAO SARPs is key to ensuring the safety and sustainability of international air connectivity.”

Pointing to ICAO’s Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP) and the European Regional Aviation Safety Group (RASG-EUR) mechanisms, Dr. Liu underscored that the foundations and targets for safety-focused cooperation are already in place. She stressed the importance of the support from ICAO’s EURNAT Regional Office in terms of implementing these efforts, and highlighted the role of ICAO’s Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) in safety prioritization.

“A main tenet of effective safety management requires that the identification of global priorities evolves away from reactive analyses based solely on accidents and fatalities, and toward assessments based on risks and potential for fatalities,” Dr. Liu said, noting that safety cooperation is facilitating stakeholders’ shift from a reactive to a proactive approach. “But in order to achieve this effectively, access to safety information by States and services providers should be improved, and the exchange and sharing of relevant data encouraged.”

Stressing that continuous efforts by all ICAO States towards aviation safety had resulted in 2016 achieving the lowest ever accident rate, with 2.1 accidents per million departures,  Dr. Liu noted that there was nonetheless no room for complacency even among EURNAT States with “mature safety oversight capabilities.”

“Our safety objective is zero accidents,” she said, noting that the implementation of their State Safety Programmes (SSPs) should be prioritized. “And as we continue to make significant progress in aviation safety, we must also recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to the effective implementation of State Safety Programmes and Safety Management Systems (SMS).”

Dr. Liu reiterated ICAO’s unwavering commitment to supporting and enabling States’ safety efforts, as well as her confidence that further progress can be achieved.

“From the cockpit to the ICAO Council Chamber, safety is always a fundamental priority in our global community,” she stressed.

In addition to her delivery of the Symposium’s opening address, Dr. Liu’s mission to Tallinn resulted in high-level meetings with Estonia’s Minister of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure, Ms. Kadri Simson, and Mr. Henrik Hololei, the European Commission’s Director General for Mobility and Transport. These meetings contributed to the momentum for enhanced cooperation between ICAO and the European Commission and highlighted the opportunities for leveraging aviation to advance socio-economic development throughout the European Union and in Estonia in particular.

Council President highlights pertinence of ICAO Global Plans to effective leadership at 27th ACI AFRICA/WORLD Conference
Delivering his keynote address to the 27th ACI Africa/World Conference in Port Louis, Mauritius, on the theme of ‘bold leadership in a time of change’, ICAO Council President Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu highlighted sectoral growth, commercial space flight and emerging unmanned and remotely-piloted aircraft technologies as some of the key challenges facing contemporary civil aviation leaders and planners.

“While our continued sectoral growth is a desirable outcome, it is also our greatest challenge,” Dr. Aliu stressed, “but beyond growth there is also a very exciting and rapid evolution now underway in the field of commercial space flights, and especially unmanned aerial vehicle technologies; one which many feel is signalling the dawn of an entirely new era in civil aviation.”

Regarding growth, President Aliu highlighted that the projected doubling of flight and passenger volumes by the early 2030s poses significant risks to air transport safety performance, network capacity and efficiency, security preparedness, and emissions mitigation targets. He also remarked upon the risks it poses to air transport’s role in supporting enhanced sustainable prosperity wherever States have established ICAO-compliant aviation connectivity.

“Sustained negative performance impacts would not only be unacceptable, they would also pose significant risks to the basic value offerings of air services,” he noted. “Furthermore they would threaten air transport’s role as a significant engine for sustainable socio-economic development, and especially for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) such as Mauritius which depend significantly on air transport for their tourism industry and global connectivity more generally.”

“One of the most important prerequisites for future air transport sustainability depends on the quality and extent of the infrastructure and human resources development commitments which governments make today,” he added.

In response to these numerous and diverse challenges, President Aliu noted that ICAO has set out detailed planning and targets which have been endorsed by ICAO’s Member States in the agency’s Global Plans for aviation safety and air navigation. He further added that aviation security responses and coordination would be benefitting from a similar Global Plan for aviation Security, which is expected to be endorsed by the ICAO Council in November.

“As the United Nations agency for international civil aviation, ICAO facilitates coordination among our Member States, but also serves as the global platform for collaboration between national governments and the many industry stakeholders comprising international air transport’s very dynamic community,” he commented. “This affords us a uniquely comprehensive perspective from which to identify key challenges for air transport, as well as to coordinate global responses to them.”

Some of the further responses highlighted by the Council President in this regard included ICAO’s World Aviation Forums, which are helping governments, partners and investors to work with one another more effectively on large-scale aviation development projects, ICAO’s inaugural Next Generation of Aviation Professionals (NGAP) Global Summit, which seeks to ensure a sufficient skilled workforce to handle future sectoral demand, and the numerous means by which ICAO has been forging progress and cooperation of late to help minimize air transport’s environmental impacts.

“I would further like to reaffirm our commitment to continue to assist our Member States in optimizing the incredible benefits of aviation under our No Country Left Behind initiative,” he added, and in concluding stressed how more progress will be achieved on the basis of the excellent cooperation established between States, ACI and other industry stakeholders through ICAO.

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Tatiana is the news coordinator for TravelDailyNews Media Network (traveldailynews.gr, traveldailynews.com and traveldailynews.asia). Her role includes monitoring the hundreds of news sources of TravelDailyNews Media Network and skimming the most important according to our strategy.

She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication & Mass Media from Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens and she has been editor and editor-in-chief in various economic magazines and newspapers.

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