Future Safety Risks Identified

A new report by the Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has identified trends expected to influence Australian aviation safety over the next three to five years. The trends relate to unprecedented global demand for aviation services, manufacturing and technological developments, increased security and greater environmental awareness.
Issues identified in the report will feed into industry/CASA working groups and will contribute to the development of Australia’s National Aviation Policy or White paper, which was announced in April 2008. CASA CEO Bruce Byron says that identifying future trends will help the Australian Government, CASA and the aviation industry mitigate potential risks to safety. “It is no longer acceptable to rely solely on incident or accident data in an attempt to predict future risks to aviation safety,” he believes. A range of representatives and organizations contributed to the report and were asked to consider the greatest safety risks the aviation industry will need to address over the coming three to five years. “Participants were asked to look beyond organizational level issues and instead consider matters of a ‘whole of industry’ nature, focusing on the priority area of passenger-carrying operations,” said Byron. The most consistently identified broad trends were global demand for aviation services, environmental change awareness and initiatives, aircraft, systems and technology and international instability and security