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Air travel remains safer than ever despite recent tragedies – Iata

19th June 2015

By: Keith Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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Despite recent high-profile tragedies, which claimed hundreds of lives, airline flying today is, in fact, safer than it has ever been. This was highlighted by International Air Transport Association (IATA) director-general and CEO Tony Tyler at the organisation’s recent annual general meeting (AGM) in Miami, Florida, in the US. Iata is the global airline industry association, with 257 members who account for 84% of all air traffic.

“Safety is the number one priority for everyone associated with aviation,” he affirmed in his address to the AGM. “With one jet hull loss for every 4.4-million flights last year, flying has never been safer.” (To be precise, the jet hull loss rate for 2014 was 0.23 per million sectors flown, the lowest rate ever recorded.) “In contrast, paradoxically so, aviation safety has been a constant in recent headlines. This was largely driven by three extraordinary events – MH 370, MH 17 and Germanwings 9525.”

Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 disappeared without trace in March last year, while en route from Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, to Beijing, in China; all indications are that it was diverted radically from its assigned course and it is currently believed to have crashed, or been crashed, in the south-eastern Indian Ocean. Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 was shot down over a rebel-held area of eastern Ukraine in July 2014 by a surface-to-air missile most probably launched by a rebel unit. Germanwings 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps in March by its suicidal copilot, who locked the pilot out of the flight deck.

“Every loss is a tragedy,” he highlighted. “I know that you join me in remembering all who have perished in aviation tragedies and their families and friends. “The greatest tribute that we can pay to them is to make flying ever safer. That is precisely what we are doing.” As a result of MH 370, a 15-minute position reporting standard is being developed under the aegis of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO – a specialist agency of the United Nations). “And in the near future, emerging technology and proposed new practices will move us closer to ensuring that never again will an aircraft simply disappear.”

“MH 17 was an outrage,” he asserted. “Civilian aircraft are instruments of peace. They must never be targets for weapons of war. Governments are working together through ICAO to enhance the sharing of security information.” (ICAO launched a conflict zone information portal on the Internet in April.) Iata would also like a global convention covering the design, manufacture, sale and deployment of anti-aircraft weapons.

“Germanwings 9525 was a deliberate and horrible act by one of our own,” he pointed out. “Day in and day out, safety is the focus of aviation professionals. But there is no immunity to mental health issues. “The investigation conclusions will help airlines and regulators to look again at the balance needed to monitor mental health in an environment that is aligned with the Just Culture that drives safety forward.” (Just Culture is defined by Eurocontrol – the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation – as “a culture in which front-line operators and others are not punished for actions, omissions or decisions taken by them which are commensurate with their experience and training, but where gross negligence, wilful violations and destructive acts are not tolerated”.)

Regarding Africa, poor safety (and other inadequate regulatory) oversight is still a matter of concern in many countries. Strikingly, there is a huge difference in the safety records between those sub-Saharan Africa airlines that have gone through the Iata Operation Safety Audit (IOSA) and those that have not. The 27 sub-Saharan Africa airlines on the IOSA register had 1.95 accidents (all types of accidents, not just fatal ones) per million flights last year, while those not on the IOSA register had 19.62 accidents per million flights – ten times more! Even so, there was not one jet hull loss in Africa in 2014.

Returning to the global level, the first quarter of this year saw three jet and three turboprop hull losses, during 7.9-million jet and 1.9-million turboprop flights (9.8-million flights in total). For jets, the hull loss rate was 0.38 per million flights, better than the 2010/14 five-year average loss rate of 0.45 but above the record-low figure for last year (0.23). The turboprop loss rate during the first quarter was 1.58 per million flights, again an improvement on the 2010/15 five-year average of 2.92 but also an improvement on the 2014 year figure of 2.32.

This year is the seventieth anniversary of Iata, which was originally set up by 57 airlines from around the world. “We will always rise to the challenges that accidents present,” assured Tyler. “And we will do so in alignment with strategies and methodologies that have proved themselves over many years by making flying the safest form of long-distance travel.”

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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