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STRONG CONSENSUS REACHED AT ICAO SAFETY CONFERENCE ON WAYS TO REDUCE ACCIDENTS
MONTREAL, 1 April 2010 – A High-Level Safety Conference which concluded today established a strong mandate for the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to create a strategy to further reduce the global accident rate, through the sharing of safety-related information among Member States and the air transport industry.

More than 600 participants at the four-day event, attended by Ministers and Directors General of Civil Aviation from 150 Member countries as well as industry representatives, recommended that ICAO create a global safety information exchange to enable analysis of key safety indicators. This will guide future strategic decisions related to the evolution of today’s air transportation system. The Conference called upon ICAO to facilitate the collection, analysis and dissemination of safety information provided by States and industry partners, throughout the international aviation community.

The Conference further recommended that ICAO develop processes to give the general public access to relevant safety information, thereby allowing them to make an informed decision about the safety of air transportation and to further ensure that such information is used solely to improve aviation safety and not for retribution or the purpose of gaining economic advantage.

“We have traditionally focused our efforts on accident reports as a means to improve safety. This new approach will help us to better identify and deal with safety threats before they result in accidents”, said Roberto Kobeh González, President of the Council of ICAO.

“Regulators and industry must come to manage safety-critical information in the same way that they view accidents. Both must become triggers for action in preventing accidents,” he added.

On Tuesday, ICAO, the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States (FAA), the Commission of the European Union (EC) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) signed a Declaration of Intent on the development of a global safety information exchange agreement.

In the months to come, the parties will establish an operational framework for the information exchange. It will address technical, confidentiality, legal and policy implications, as well as the relevance and timing of information collected.

“ICAO has long promoted the concept of information sharing on a global scale so as to connect the various databases of regulators and industry. The recommendation from the Conference and the Declaration of Intent represent a breakthrough in achieving our objective of better utilizing data to reduce the accident rate globally and in specific regions and States around the world,” Mr. Kobeh emphasized.

On the question of black boxes, the Conference recommended that ICAO look into technical enhancements that would improve the ability to locate and recover the units, such as longer time periods for signals, better resistance to crashes and floatability.

“While the electronic transmission of information during flights is progressively improving, black boxes will remain absolutely indispensable for years to come as the primary source of technical data in cases of accidents or incidents,” Mr. Kobeh said.

The Conference also called on States and industry to ensure improved communication and surveillance of flights over oceanic and remote areas through the use of all available technologies.

Reaffirming the fundamental mission of ICAO to ensure the safety of international civil aviation, the Conference endorsed the creation of a new Annex to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, one dedicated exclusively to safety management principles.

Recommendations from the Conference will be submitted to the Council of ICAO for consideration in the coming weeks.

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Sharing of Information highlight of second day of Safety Conference
March 30, 2010 — oacicomm
On the second day of the High-level safety Conference, the more than 600 participants from some 150 ICAO Member States and industry unequivocally endorsed the twin concepts of transparency and sharing of safety-related information among States and with major stakeholders within the global aviation community, as well as with the general public.

There was agreement that ICAO should be the body charged with coordinating the integration of the safety information provided by the international community as well as for the dissemination of safety intelligence. To that end, ICAO would convene a group of experts to define and harmonize safety metrics, associated data requirements and analysis processes.

ICAO would also develop a code of conduct on the sharing of safety information, so as to ensure that such information is used solely to improve aviation safety and not for retribution or the purpose of gaining economic advantage.

Processes would be developed to provide the general public with access to relevant safety information which would allow them to make an informed decision about the safety of air transportation.

Recommendations on these and other items will be reviewed and approved on the final day of the Conference, Thursday, 1 April. Recommendations will subsequently be submitted to the ICAO Council for consideration in the coming weeks.

Earlier in the Conference, in line with the discussions on the sharing of information as a means to improve aviation safety levels around the world, ICAO and three other State and industry parties signed a Declaration of Intent on the Development of a Global Safety Information Exchange Agreement: the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States (FAA); the Commission of the European Union (EC); and the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

In the weeks to come, representatives of the signatories will produce a work plan incorporating the following activities and concepts: identification of the safety information gathered by the Participants that would be most relevant to the enhancement of risk reduction activities; identification of the legal or policy constraints, if any, on the ability of Participants to share this information among the parties and development of mechanisms to overcome these constraints; identification of the appropriate timing of that information sharing; development of an efficient mechanism to ensure that this information is used to generate safety intelligence and identify critical safety trends in a timely fashion; development of policies and procedures to safeguard proprietary, confidentially submitted, and/or personal information in line with relevant applicable privacy laws, data sharing policies and regulations standardization of aspects of the audit metrics, data taxonomies etc, to maximize effective utilization of the safety information gathered in this process; and determination of how to disseminate this information globally as appropriate.

Tomorrow the conference will discuss the creation of a new Annex to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, one dedicated to safety processes.