Safety Leadership Will be Focus of FSF’s 74th International Summit

Senior aviation executives from around the world will discuss key principles of safety leadership and important lessons learned while navigating the global COVID-19 pandemic over the past 18 months in the opening session of Flight Safety Foundation’s 74th annual International Air Safety Summit (IASS). Virtual IASS 2021 is scheduled for Sept. 21‒22.

The opening executive panel will feature members of the Foundation’s Board of Governors from Europe, Asia Pacific and South America, representing both industry and government, in a discussion moderated by Board Chairman Capt. Conor Nolan. The session will focus on the importance of safety leadership during the pandemic and as aviation begins to recover. The panelists will discuss resiliency and the challenges and opportunities of leadership and strengthening safety culture.

“The theme of this year’s IASS is safety leadership, which is particularly important as the aviation industry recovers from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of the Foundation. “Over the past 18 months, the industry and its personnel have been through an unprecedented period of professional and personal turbulence. Safety leadership is essential to fostering a healthy safety culture and to safely recovering from the pandemic.”

Over two days of virtual sessions, four key principles of safety leadership will be discussed. Within the framework of those principles, topics to be addressed include a global aviation safety assessment and identifying the regions where progress on long-term risk issues has been hampered by the pandemic; a renewed focus on the core knowledge needed by safety leaders; introducing solutions to reduce persistent risks in flight operations; improving safety through learning from all operations and not just those that go wrong; using and sharing data to improve operational safety; embedding safety culture in new entrants; and cybersecurity in aviation.

Scheduled speakers and panelists include safety professionals from airlines, unmanned aircraft operators, regulators, trade groups, international organizations, air navigation service providers, manufacturers, and software developers. 

Also on the agenda are the presentations of the Laura Taber Barbour Air Safety Award and the FSF-Boeing Aviation Safety Lifetime Achievement Award.

IASS 2021 registration is complimentary for Foundation members. For more information and to register, please visit the IASS page on the Foundation website.