The International Air Transport Association (IATA) – the global representative body for the airline industry – opened its 2022 Safety Conference on Tuesday. The conference is being held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, and Emirates is the host airline. Two of the top items on the agenda are the Safety Leadership Charter and the evolution of the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA).

The Safety Leadership Charter has been developed by IATA in consultation with its member airlines, as well as the wider aviation community. It is intended to help aviation executives to develop positive safety cultures, and strengthen safety performance and operational resilience within their organisations.

“Safety begins at the top,” points out IATA senior VP operations, safety and security Nick Careen. “Aviation executives need to demonstrate safety leadership and a strong commitment to a positive safety culture and then ensure that vision is conveyed across the entire organisation. This is critical to ensuring continued high levels of safety as the industry emerges from the turbulence and disruption of the last two years and demand for air travel accelerates.”

Undergoing IOSA is an IATA membership requirement. Safety data shows that, in aggregate, airlines on the IOSA registry are significantly safer than airlines that are not on the IOSA registry. IOSA registry airlines in 2021 had an all-accident rate of 0.45, which was more than six times less than the figure of 2.86 recorded by non-IOSA airlines.

“IOSA is recognised as the gold standard for airline operational safety,” he highlights. “Today, however, we have access to significantly more data than we did when IOSA was created nearly 20 years ago, enabling it to be even more effective. Focusing on pertinent safety risks while maintaining a baseline of safety, will contribute to raising the safety bar even higher.”

To further improve IATA airline safety, an adaptive approach driven by risk and data will be needed. IOSA will have to align with the specific risk factors of each airline in order to be relevant in improving their safety. The intent is to evolve IOSA into such a risk-based model.