The African Airlines Association (AFRAA) and Flight Safety Foundation jointly organised the inaugural African Aviation Safety and Operations Summit on May 15, 2024, in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia.
The one-day summit, themed “Championing Africa Aviation Safety Together,” aimed to promote and improve safety standards within the African aviation sector. It brought together aviation stakeholders to discuss, strategise, and collaborate on shaping a safer future for African aviation. The summit addressed various aviation safety and operations facets, offering stakeholders a forum to discuss and exchange best practices.
The summit commenced with a snapshot of the region’s aviation safety landscape and focussed on the strides made and challenges addressed, along with a roadmap for sustaining and advancing safety in African skies. While the African aviation industry’s safety performance has improved in recent years, more progress is needed to achieve global safety targets. Indeed, the absence of accidents does not necessarily mean the presence of safety.
Participants were presented with data on accidents and serious incidents to highlight high-risk categories in the region, prompting panellists to collectively explore and address underlying factors driving safety trends in African aviation. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) global and regional high-risk categories remain a significant concern for Africa, especially regarding runway excursions, with eight occurrences reported since the start of 2024.
The summit focussed on safety culture and organisational leadership, examining the role of leadership in fostering a robust safety culture within aviation organisations. This included promoting open reporting systems, learning from incidents, training, and encouraging continuous improvement. Participants stressed the importance of a safety culture in ensuring safe operations in any organisation, emphasising the need to prioritise safety as a core value throughout an organisation, from leadership to frontline workers.
Throughout the one-day summit, participants exchanged numerous insights on the day’s topics, issues, and challenges. They discussed how brainstorming could improve safety and bolster resilience in addressing ICAO global and regional high-risk areas.
Participants called for more collaboration and cooperation among stakeholders to effectively implement safety requirements and best practices, including using technology and automation, which are crucial for ensuring safety, efficiency, and growth in the aviation industry.
Some other predominant challenges highlighted were in the following areas:
- Air navigation infrastructure safety and airports infrastructure safety;
- Capacity/capability of safety oversight bodies;
- Lack of effective safety data collection/information sharing, data-driven safety management; and,
- Investigation of all accidents and serious incidents.
The inaugural Safety and Operations Summit identified a strong need for the establishment of priority actions:
- Commitment to Safety
- Operationalisation of existing initiatives – runway excursion
- Establishment of collaborative safety enhancement groups
- More specific training
Download the full report here – African Aviation Safety and Operations Summit Report