What is SAFE360?

On 13-15 September 2022, EASA hosted this year's SAFE360° Conference. SAFE is so much more than just a Conference. This article summarises what took place at this year's event and will tell you about the key role that SAFE plays in the European Safety Risk Management (SRM). 

What happened at SAFE360° 2022

Here is a quick summary of the key points discussed at the event across the different topics. Get the full and short summary from the SAFE2022 event page here. 

Introduction and Keynote:

• Aviation is still feeling the after-effects of COVID – we face multiple challenges also from the war in Ukraine and Cyber threats as well as the traditional aviation risks.
• We must show our commitment to modernisation, green measures and integrated risk management.
• SAFE was all about providing a forum for industry to share opinions and learn together.

Safety Landscape Panel:

Here is a short summary video from our panelists, Luc Tytgat (EASA), Yannick Malinge (Airbus), Jasper Daams (Amsterdam Schiphol Airport), Giancarlo Buono (IATA). 

 

• The system is stretched, at a pivot point from an environmental perspective, facing challenges to attract new talent and deal with multiple threats.
• From a pilot perspective we see challenges with basic skills, compounded by the loss of experience across the industry.
• We need to coordinate effectively across the domains, be bold and help industry to get its mojo back.

Flash Talk – Safety Culture:

• Safety culture is quite a remote term – how do we make it relevant to our staff.
• It’s a learning mindset – if you screw up, own up – we are not interested in who, we are interested in why.

D4S Panel:

• D4S is a voluntary partnership between industry, Member States co-funded by the EU.
• The goal is to provide an insight into safety risks that any one organisation alone doesn’t have access to.
• EASA is now launching the next, operational phase of D4S to get more organisations involved.

Flash Talk – Integrated Risk Management:

• We know management systems are vital for safe operations.
• Currently many systems are siloed for safety, security, environment and quality – but they use similar principles, methods and data sources.
• Integrated risk management makes sense as a business approach (efficiency and effectiveness) but there is still work to do.

Flash Talk – How to Prioritise Safety Issues:

• The Safety Issue Prioritisation Index (SIPI) is a way to calculate the importance of safety issues across the aviation system.
• It doesn’t just look at occurrence data but also includes expert judgement/ other data.

360° Panel – Approach Path and Energy Management

• Approach path management is a high priority safety issues from both data and the SIPI – 19 actions are now proposed in the collaborative analysis.
• Energy management is also critical, TEM in approach path management has been identified as a key mitigation.
• We need to work together on the combination of risk management strategies.

360° Panel – Safe Airpsace Integration of UAS

• We want to share the skies, not say that they belong to one group of stakeholders.
• It is important to share traffic information across all parties to avoid collisions and to continue the safety promotion across the industry.
• The most powerful risk mitigation is the establishment of geo-zones to keep drones and aircraft apart.

Flash Talk – Why do you risk classify occurrences:

• Safety reporting gives you data, but for risk management, you need knowledge. The ERCS bridges this gap.
• It is for risk assessing occurrences, not a risk assessment tool.

360° Panel – The Human Performance Challenge

• The challenge was defined as "Having enough competent people who are operationally ready and fit for duty"
• It is important to help understand how to encourage people into aviation and then ensure competencies for all staff are understood.
• We need to better understand the concept of “Fitness for work” as opposed to just fatigue.

Flash Talk – Extending SMS into Ground Handling:

• SMS is now extending into ground handling and the management systems should be appropriate to the size and activity of the organisation.
• The challenge is also to get a positive culture everywhere with the added challenge of so many integrated stakeholders.

360° Panel – The Management of Repetitive Defects in Safety Critical Systems

• Tracking, reporting and resolving repetitive defects is a continual challenge.
• It is vital to capture these challenges in the management system and also to communicate with crew as well as the technical departments.
• Pilots could also better explain technical issues to help the engineering departments.

FDM Breakout Sessions

• Closed the loop on new FDM good practice produced by EOFDM and Data4Safety, to address operators’ needs.
• It included industry presentations demonstrating the benefit of advanced computation methods in FDM, and providing practical examples of implementation.
• Topics included monitoring take-off performance, approach path management and using FDM to support the management of change.

The purpose of SAFE360°

SAFE360° is not just a conference where we bring people together to talk about safety and the go home again having drunk lots of coffee and enjoyed meeting up with people you haven't seen for a long time. It performs a key role in the European SRM process, which you can see below. 

At the start of the process we have Steps 1 and 2, to identify and then assess safety issues. The purpose of SAFE is to bring the industry together to take the pulse of the industry and make sure that we are worrying about the right things. Then we pick some important topics and discuss them together in a 360° approach that informs the planning for the European Plan for Aviation Safety (EPAS).

This is associated with the routine work on the "Identification of Safety Issues" and "Assessment of Safety Issues" that is done by the Collaborative Analysis Groups (CAGs). There are 4 CAGs that support the safety of the commercial aviation system. These are:

• The Commercial Air Transport (CAT) CAG, mainly covering Air Ops issues.
• The Air Traffic Management (ATM) CAG. 
• The Aerodromes and Ground Handling CAG. 
• The Human Factors (HF) CAG.

The CAGs have membership from NAAs and industry. Each group has around 25 member organisations and this means that many organisations don't have the chance to take part. Through SAFE360° we can involve lots more people in these safety conversations. It is worth also mentioning that the inputs from the CAGs then feed up to the Commercial Aviation Safety Committee (the CAS.COM) where industry leaders work with EASA to channel the inputs to the EPAS. 

You will hopefully remember our Safety Week that we hosted back in June. This was done as part of the Stronger, Safer, Together Campaign. Both the Safety Week and the campaign are the key collaborative activities for the implementation part at Step 4 of the SRM process. 

In person only - to encourage open discussions

During COVID you probably got used to virtual events. One of the special things about SAFE360° is that we have been able to go back to it being an in-person only event. We use the Chatham House Rules to encourage open and honest conversations about our safety challenges. In person we can manage this properly so that we can talk together safe that we all share the same goal of improving safety. 

Identification of Safety Issues

The goal of Day 1 is to focus on the question of whether we have a shared picture on the top safety issues that the industry is facing at the moment. Specifically the panel on the EU Safety Landscape will provide the chance to share experiences on what we have learned this summer to make sure that we put our efforts in the right place.  

In a complex system like aviation, its important that we work together. 

Assessment of Safety Issues

Day 2 of SAFE360° is then focused more towards detailed discussion on 4 key safety issues. We will have four 360° panels covering the following topics:

• Approach path and energy management.
• Safe airspace integration of UAS.
• The human performance challenge. 
• The management of repetitive defects in safety critical systems. 

The results of these discussions and the wider assessment activities might lead to specific EPAS actions. More immediately they help to inform EASA's collaborative Safety Promotion efforts through Together4Safety. This enables us to share useful information with the industry quickly to help you manage risks effectively in your organisation. 

FDM, Data4Safety and Flash Talks

In addition to the panels, there are some other interesting parts of SAFE360°. The third and final day of SAFE360° is devoted to Flight Data Monitoring (FDM). Experts from this field will share ideas and best practice that will help you make the most of this important safety resource. 

With the continued expansion of the EASA Data4Safety (D4S) project, the organisations involved will update the conference on the progress of this exciting collaborative initiative. Hopefully this will inspire your organisation to be part of the operational phase. 

Finally to help you think differently about safety, you will also have the chance to see a number of short flash talks. Industry experts will talk about topics like Safety Culture, Integrated Risk Management, Safety Issue Prioritisation, Risk Classification and SMS in Ground Handling. 

See you there - If you are not able to come, keep an eye out for our SAFE360° summary video

If you are coming to SAFE, we look forward to seeing you on 13-15 September at Brussels NH Bloom Hotel. If not, don't worry. We will be making some videos to summarise what happened at SAFE.