EASA gathered aviation safety community at first Safety in Aviation Forum for Europe (SAFE)

A new and exciting event took place in Brussels on 13-15 May 2019: EASA premiered the Safety in Aviation Forum for Europe, or SAFE. SAFE is an innovative conference format that provided an all-round multi-sectorial picture of the safety issues, a focused examination of key risk areas and a toolbox of potential mitigations.

About 250 people from across the European aviation safety community came together to discuss and share their experiences.

Patrick Ky said “This is the first edition of SAFE and EASA is experimenting a new concept and format. This will complement the Data4Safety initiative that addresses the data dimension of safety intelligence.  Such valuable discussion holds the key to meeting the safety challenges we face in aviation today and in the future”. 

Organisations from across Europe came together to understand more about the shared risks that are faced by the different actors in the aviation system. While mitigations are enacted at the organisational level, they may not always provide the complete solution.  Additionally, solutions may result in risk transference to other stakeholders and activities.  At SAFE stakeholders discussed the broader perception of the combined safety risk picture and a multi-domain perspective that considered an array of solutions and to develop a better understanding about how the industry can come together to develop collaborative mitigations.

The first day covered the different strategic views, discussed the top-safety risks and balanced those views with possible collaborative mitigations. The second and third days, while thematically different, followed a similar rhythm with 360° discussions on runway incursion, lithium batteries and ground safety followed by breakout sessions on occurrence reporting and flight data monitoring.  It was an inspiring event that supports the Data4Safety initiative that will provide a long term framework for collaboration in European aviation.