Much else will be discussed at the conference, including the natural tensions between safety and operations. ANSP management must ensure that risks to operational service delivery are minimised, and a critical session will provide insight on how operations and safety staff can harmonise efforts.

The panel will discuss how to balance the customers’ desire for a cost and environmentally efficient flight with one that is always safe. It will also explore how much impact safety initiatives have on operations and whether there is a benefit to engaging operational personnel in the development of safety initiatives.

The three days of high-level debate and workshops at the CANSO Global Safety Conference will also feature presentations on safety management systems (SMS), an integral part of any safety strategy. The CANSO Standard of Excellence in Safety Management Systems (SoE in SMS), produced in collaboration with EUROCONTROL, has already been published and shares best practices in SMS.

The aim is to help ANSPs continually improve their efforts to manage safety and establish a pathway that they can follow to build an SMS that is compatible with international regulatory requirements as laid out in ICAO’s Annex 19.

“Another big push at the conference will be to have some of our members share case studies on actual events and how they went,” says Bill Middleswart, CANSO’s
Safety Programme Manager. “It takes a lot of courage to be transparent and these case studies will provide incredible insight.

“Finally, we will be wrapping up with a day of workshops and opportunities for our workgroups to meet and work on their projects and plans.”

Safety versus operations

Safety is more than a priority for air transport, it is a core value. That makes leadership in this area vital.

The CANSO Global Safety Conference, 27-30 November in Dublin, Ireland, will explore safety leadership in all its aspects to ensure air navigation service providers (ANSPs) have the support and tools they need to keep safety front and centre of their strategies.

One of the key elements is creating an atmosphere of trust, where staff are encouraged to report safety-related issues. Although this is essential to a healthy ATM organisation, it can be difficult to establish in practice with various perspectives that can seem to be in conflict. Employees must balance messages to be cost-efficient with messages to put safety first, for example. The safety leadership tone must therefore be clear and consistent to ensure a safety culture emerges that is robust enough to withstand other pressures.

The unique challenges of a mission-focussed and high-stakes organisation, such as an ANSP, will also be examined. Safety at an ANSP relates directly to the safety of the global flying public. Such a pressurised environment means safety must be woven into business strategies, processes, and performance measures so that all employees feel a responsibility for safety.