Flying never safer: IATA

Flying never safer: IATA
By Daisy Melwani


Despite a series of airline disasters in the past 15 months, the global aviation chief says flying has never been safer.

“With one jet hull loss for every 4.4 million flights last year, flying has never been safer,” International Air Transport Association director general, Tony Tyler said to delegates attending the 71st annual IATA conference in Miami over the weekend.

“Every loss is a tragedy,” Tyler said to over 1000 delegates at the opening of the conference.

“In contrast, paradoxically so, aviation safety has been a constant in recent headlines,” added Tyler, referring to a series of headline-making disasters including the disappearance of flight MH370, the downing of MH17 and in March the deliberate crashing of Germanwings flight 9525 as “extraordinary events”, AFP reports.

Tyler described the downing of MH17 as an “outrage” which has yet to be “fully addressed in a global convention to control the design, manufacture, sale and deployment of weapons with anti-aircraft capability”, adding that civilian aircraft “must never be targets for weapons of war”.

Tyler also said the findings of the full investigation on the Germanwings 9525 crash will see “regulators and industry looking at the balance needed to monitor the mental health of crew in an environment aligned with the non-punitive Just Culture that drives safety forward”.

“The greatest tribute we can pay to them is to make flying ever safer. That is precisely what we are doing.”

Tyler also said tracking standards are being developed to report on an airline’s whereabout every 15 minutes.

“In the near future, emerging technology and proposed new practices will move us closer to ensuring that never again will an aircraft simply disappear.”

Tyler also warned against a rush to judgment or regulation in the immediate aftermath of accidents.

“We must not allow anything to undermine the well-established accident investigation standards and processes, which lead to findings that improve safety,” Tyler said.

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