Global Standards and More Data Use Seen as Key to Safe Management of Future Demand

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has issued a press release in which it urges aviation stakeholders to “follow global standards and make greater use of operational data in order to safely accommodate an additional 3.8 billion air travelers by 2036.”

At the Safety and Flight Operations Conference, IATA’s Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac stated that: “Over the next 20 years, we expect to see a near doubling of passengers from the approximately 4 billion who traveled in 2017. Managing this growth, while making aviation even safer than it already is, will be a massive undertaking.”
On discussing the fact that 2017 saw no fatalities involving passenger jets, and that the fatal accident rate currently stood at 0.14 per million flights, Mr. de Juniac commented: “If we look at it another way–using fatality risk–on average, a person would have to travel by air every day for 6,033 years before experiencing an accident in which at least one passenger was killed. Yet we still have accidents, so we know there is room for improvement. Each fatality is a tragedy. And that rededicates everyone in the aviation industry to our common goal of having every flight take-off and land safely.”

On global standards, IATA sees this, along with best practices, as key to sustaining safety improvements, with Mr. de Juniac pointing out that over the last five years, the accident rate for airlines on the IOSA registry has been nearly three times better than for non-IOSA airlines.

Mr. de Juniac then went on to say that “future safety advances primarily will lie in achieving a better understanding of what happens in the more than 100,000 flights operating safely every day,” adding that: “IATA’s Global Aviation Data Management initiative is a crucial part of this effort. The GADM program now includes information from over 470 different organizations. Over 90% of IATA members are contributing to at least one of the GADM databases.”

Shortly after Mr. de Juniac delivered his remarks to the Safety and Flight Operations Conference, the industry suffered a fatal accident with WN1380. Mr. de Juniac commented, “This accident is a tragic reminder that our work on safety is never done. Accidents are extremely rare. Our goal is to eliminate them.”