Be Ready

It has been great to see airports starting to fill up with passengers and more passengers taking to the skies. As we approach what will hopefully be the summer peak of 2022, its important to take a little time to think about whether your organisation is ready for the coming months and beyond. This is what “Being Ready” is all about - ensuring safe operations, always. 

Everyone's situation is unique - what does that mean for you and your organisation?

One of the most important things that has become clearer during the different discussions is that there is no “new normal” for anyone. At an organisational level, what is happening in your organisation is unique. This means that its important that you take the time to think about where you are in the Ramp-up journey and decide what to do based on what is happening in your organisation. To do this its important to have a culture that encourages people to have positive safety conversations at every opportunity.  Such a culture will also drive your reporting system and give you the data you need to make effective decisions.

The same is true at an individual level. Your Ramp-up journey is also unique. You may have managed to keep working throughout the pandemic, starting out thinking it was a short term thing only to find that you have now run the length of a marathon in 100 metre sprints and are now totally burnt out. You may have spent a long period of time away from the industry and are just starting to come back to work. You could be in a totally different situation. Whatever situation you find yourself in, its important to have a conversation with yourself to take stock of the situation. Continually ask yourself “How am I coping?”, “How am I feeling?”, “What can I do for myself and others?”. As we say in safety demonstrations, take care of yourself so that you can better help others. 

In the operational teams within our organisations you need to think about the different situations people are in so that you can understand what this means for your operation and manage things accordingly. You also need to think about the interfaces between your organisations and other that you rely on for safe and effective operations.

So what does it really means to “Be Ready?”  

This is the question we have been asking ourselves and talking about with the people who have joined our conversation aviation discussions throughout the 4-week cycle. We have split this into three parts:

• Having enough skilled, trained and qualified people who are operationally ready and fit for duty.

• Ensuring that you have the right tools, equipment and infrastructure in place.

• Defining and living by the values that creates the trust needed to support positive safety conversations.

At an organizational level, it is useful to take the time to discuss how you would answer these questions.

This is what we did with Bjorn Gudmundsson from Icelandair, Sande Bergmane-Behmane from Air Baltic and Yogesh Parekh from Menzies Aviation. You can watch the video of this on the Together4Safety Youtube here or listen to the Podcast on Spotify, Anchor FM or Google Podcasts (search for Conversation Aviation).

The biggest message that came out of this discussion is what conversation aviation is all about – the need to talk about safety in an open and honest way, across all levels of your organisation. Not always easy but it has to be done.

we will short provide more information on each of these three points. Once the hyperlinks you will be able to click below to find out more about the discussions in these areas and the resources that have been created to help your operations during the Ramp-up.