EASA SAFE360˚ Discusses Range of Risks, Solutions

The safety landscape, workforce challenges, integrated risk management, management of repetitive defects, occurrence reporting, flight data monitoring, drone interference, Data4Safety, satellite navigation outages, and runway safety were all topics of intense discussion for the two days of this year’s EASA SAFE360˚ conference in Cologne, Germany, where the EU Aviation Safety Agency is headquartered.

Conceived in 2019, the conference strives to break down silos by examining key safety issues in Europe through a cross-domain perspective. The first edition of SAFE 360˚ focused on carriage of lithium batteries, ground handling and the ever-perplexing runway incursions.

The conference was cancelled by COVID in 2020, virtual in 2021, returning to in person in 2022 in Brussels. There was no 2023 event.

This year’s gathering was attended by 200 people from 40 countries, representing 5 aviation authorities, 4 associations, 8 airlines, 3 airports, 3 maintenance organizations, 3 air navigation service providers, and 2 manufacturers. It featured 50 speakers across 7 panels and 2 flash talks.

“It's mainly intended as a forum for safety managers, particularly of airlines and airports,” said John Franklin, EASA’s Head of Safety Promotion. “Maintenance organizations and others and associations, but particularly for airports and airlines to come together in a locked room and say, okay, what problems are you seeing? What solutions can you share with each other? The organizations really kind of dug into their soul a little bit about what they learned.”

“This idea that we don't compete on safety and trying to have kind of closed-door conversations (Chatham House Rules) was always what we imagined. We got disrupted a little bit in COVID, just not being able to have them in person. It wasn't so easy. A lot of the relationships we'd built in the first year before COVID... lots of people moved and changed and we had to rebuild, getting to know everybody again,” Franklin explained.

He said, “We always start with the same kind of concept of what's the safety landscape? And then we do the analysis the second day.”

Safety Landscape

Maria Rueda, EASA Strategy and Safety Management Director, set the first-day context. Followed by a safety exploratory panel, led by Franklin and including Daan Dousi (EASA), Ian Goodwin (Airbus), Jim Pegram (easyJet), Anthony Prior (Dublin Airport) and Martin Timmons (Airnav Ireland).

Key conclusions: It is important that we are never complacent – as an industry, as organizations, as individuals. We live in a complex, challenging world (rapid technology change, workforce issues, geopolitical instability, environmental expectations). Therefore, we need to focus on maintaining a positive safety culture: safe aircraft, safe operation, safe aviation system.

“There were a lot of threads around complacency particularly,” Franklin told CAT. “It used to be that most people had been touched personally by an accident. We realise as the system gets safer and safer, very few people under the age of 30 in the industry have had anything to do with a fatal accident at a personal level. As the system gets safer, do we forget that an accident can happen anywhere if we don't manage the risks effectively?”

Workforce Challenges

This panel was led by Bernard Bourdon (EASA) and included Jim Gavin (Irish Aviation Authority), Mark Duffy (Ryanair) and Philipp Mueller (Swissport International). They addressed work-life balance, job and financial security, emerging technologies, Gen Z motivation, and demographic challenges.

Key conclusions: Societal evolution is making it more difficult to attract and retain competent personnel. How to inspire the next generations, how to broaden the talent pool through effective DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), and retain them by promoting careers and creating organizations people want to work for?

“Aviation got a bad reputation because we cast all our staff aside fairly quickly” (during COVID), “and we didn't really know what else to do, but hopefully we learned the lessons of that,” said Franklin.

EASA is reframing EPAS (European Plan for Aviation Safety) Task SPT.0107 to address future workforce challenges.

Integrated Risk Management

This panel – led by Gian Andrea Bandieri (EASA), with Yves Mabbe (Cargolux), Max Hellman (Munich Airport), Stephane Corcos (DGAC France) and Kevin Sawyer (CAAi) - addressed some of the non-aviation risks which have potential impact on safety.

Key conclusions: The EASA research project will provide useful guidance but there are many silos to be broken down. There are still fragmented approaches in different domains across the rules on management systems.

Repetitive Defects

Led by Emilie Marchais and Jindrich Vanek of EASA and involving Sebastien Bravo Martin (Airbus), Raj De (easyJet), Peter McQuillan (British Airways) and Kerim Muammer Yurduseven (Pegasus Airlines), three organizations – a CAMO (continuing airworthiness management organisation, an AMO (approved maintenance organization) and an OEM presented how they experience and manage repetitive defects.

Good practices: accurate reporting and follow-up, prioritisation, root cause identification, avoid temporary fixes, robust procedures and strong leadership. Also, use of digital tools.

Evaluation of proposed mitigating actions will start in early 2025 and may lead to further actions across EPAS.

GNSS Outages and Alterations

The highly timely Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) discussion was led by Cyrille Rosay and Aigars Krastins (both EASA) and included Giancarlo Buono (IATA), Claude Pichavant (Airbus), Akos Pethes (Wizz Air), Tapani Maukonen (Traficom Finland), Evangelos Antonopoulos (Cyprus Air Navigation Services) and Panayiota Demetriou (DCA of Cyprus) and Ullar Salumae (Estonian Transport Authority).

“The GNSS jamming is an interesting one,” said Franklin. “So much is changing so quickly. We've had two workshops already, the second coordinated and hosted with IATA. One of the challenges is there are solutions that are starting to come that are being shared between security people and the airlines; if we share too much, is that going to help the people we're trying to stop?”

Key conclusions: Strong, long-term solutions are needed. There is a lot of ‘unofficial’ information on the Internet and social media – organizations should use the correct, official sources and ensure their flight crews do the same.

Many cross-industry collaborations continue, and the safety issue is under assessment.

Runway Safety

EASA’s Sascha Schott Oliver led with panellists Jozef De Moor (EASA), Christophe Cail (Airbus), Dave Zeitouni (Boeing), Conor Nolan (AerLingus), Cristian Alexe (Bucharest Airport) and Amadeus Bellmann (DFS).

The number of serious incidents, including near-misses, has gone up since the pandemic, and the aggregated risk of those events is high.

Key solutions: collaboration (local runway safety teams), technology (onboard aircraft) and focus on human factors (safe taxi operating procedures).

EASA has established a task force to identify risk mitigations at the European level.

Occurrence Reporting

Led by Rowan Powel (EASA) with Gerrit Neubauer (Eurowings), Alexandre Peytouraux (EASA), Maxime Wauters (EBAA), Scott Allan

(HeliOffshore). These reports are the most important sources of information for decision-making in aviation management systems. The rules have been in place for a decade, so the discussion was around future challenges.

Key analysis: Promote both proactive and reactive reporting. Technology and AI are helping solve some of the data management challenge. The challenge of implementing a Just Culture remains.

Flash Talks

Guillaume Aigoin (EASA) provided an overview of flight data monitoring (FDM) as an enabler of safe operations. EASA’s Sara Poralla spoke on interference of aircraft by drones.

Data4Safety Update

Leopold Viroles and Florent Morel (EASA) and Bert Bonke (ECA) concluded the presentations on the D4S partnership between EASA, Member States and the aviation industry. The day following, the 2nd D4S general assembly was held.

2025 SAFE360˚

EASA are considering moving next year’s event to the April / May timeframe to create more separation from the Annual Safety Conference.