Tuesday Edition: AP-SAS 2026

The Asia Pacific region continues to experience growth in air transport demand and technological innovation, but aviation safety faces increasingly diverse challenges, Hajime Sasaki, Japan’s State Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism, said in his opening remarks Tuesday on Day 1 of the 4th annual Asia Pacific Summit for Aviation Safety (AP-SAS 2026) at the Osaka International Convention Center. The challenges include greater operational complexity, pressure on human resources and infrastructure, and evolving risks involving the weather and geopolitics, he said.

“In aviation, safety must always remain our highest priority and take precedence over all other considerations,” he added.

The Asia Pacific region can lead 21st century aviation worldwide by demonstrating how to achieve excellence in aviation safety during this era of dramatic growth and change, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council President Toshiyuki Onuma said in his keynote address Tuesday morning.

The region already leads the world in aviation growth, and is making progress with aviation safety oversight, Onuma said, adding that ICAO safety oversight auditing shows that 24 of the 37 States in Asia Pacific are above the world average. As of the end of 2025, the region’s average safety oversight effective implementation score was 63.46 percent. Although the accident rate is lower than the world average, recent data shows an increase in accidents and fatalities; and runway safety, preventing midair collisions, and turbulence remain priorities, Onuma said.

“We need more qualified people, stronger oversight, and better accident investigations,” he said. “These are investments that build the public trust that aviation relies on.”

Prompt and transparent accident investigations, and the sharing of investigation findings are essential to building trust and preventing future accidents, he said. “The timely sharing of the findings from these investigations is crucial to preventing future similar accidents, Onuma said. “This must be a priority for Asia Pacific.”

Onuma also called for collaboration among States, and singled out the need to strengthen the implementation of state safety programs and national aviation safety plans in support of the ICAO Global Aviation Safety Plan. No country can fix every problem alone, and no country can be left behind, he said. “We need shared answers to shared challenges.”

He also said that the region needs to reinforce the foundations of collaboration. “We need strong laws, capable organizations, skilled people, and steady investment in oversight,” he said.

With increases in automation and use of artificial intelligence (AI), the training of aviation personnel needs to be reformed to focus on objective-oriented critical thinking to ensure that the workforce retains the capacity to understand and solve unexpected, complex problems, speakers said during Tuesday morning’s executive panel on charting the course for safety excellence.

Nick Fuller, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) associate administrator for Aviation Safety Management, said the industry must ensure that AI-driven insights are accurate and unbiased before making any operational decisions based on those insights. The industry needs to ensure that the workforce has the analytical competency and ability to override AI systems when necessary.

Capt. Ron Hay, president of the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations (IFALPA), agreed and said we need to concentrate on bringing out and emphasizing critical thinking and “assess if automation is doing what it’s supposed to do or is it harming us in some way?”

Capt. Kazu Tachibana, executive senior fellow and formerly senior vice president of Safety and Flight Operations, Japan Airlines, said, “We have to constantly monitor what’s going on out there and change the content of training to cope with the changing environment.” He said that one of the challenges facing the industry is the loss of the mentoring that used to occur between experienced pilots and new flight crewmembers.

Tan Lye Teck, executive vice president, Safety and Security, Changi Airport Group, said that there will be more situations at airports where humans are working side-by-side with machines, such as humanoids and robots. “This is something we must prepare for,” he said.

Japanese culture emphasizes harmony over assertiveness, but All Nippon Airways is trying to change that within the company, according to Hiroyuki Kometani, member of the Board, executive vice president, chief safety officer, and chair of the Safety Promotion Committee, at the carrier.

Kometani said that embedding assertion into Japanese culture is not easy, but that the carrier is attempting to do so as one of two significant safety initiatives. ANA first began introducing assertion with its pilots in the late 1980s, when it began crew (then cockpit) resource management training. Over time, the carrier expanded the use of assertion with each job category, starting with pilots, then cabin crew, ground handling staff, maintenance engineers, and dispatchers. It is now promoting the use of assertion across job categories, for example, between pilots and engineers, or flight attendants and ground crew.

The idea is to overcome the ingrained cultural and psychological barriers to assertion and to encourage employees to speak up when they see a safety issue.

The other initiative involves teaching employees about ANA’s past accidents and incidents. Kometani said the carrier had six fatal accidents in its first 19 years in business, but that it has been 55 years since ANA last had a fatal accident (a July 1971 midair collision involving an ANA aircraft and a Japan Self Defense Force fighter on a training mission that killed all 162 people on the ANA aircraft). In 2007, the carrier established the ANA Safety Education Center as a forum for learning from past accidents. The site of the 1971 crash has been turned into a memorial park that is regularly visited by ANA employees, including all new employees.

Sole source reports represent a potential gold mine of valuable safety information, according to Bennet Walsh, senior vice president, corporate aviation safety strategy, at Korean Air. The subject of a sole source report is something no one but the reporter knows about. If the report is not filed because the potential reporter is worried about the consequences, then that data point is lost, as is the ability for an organization to address the safety issue or uncover a precursor to a problem.

Much of this panel discussion, and other panel discussions throughout Day 1, addressed the need for, and value of, regional collaboration on safety. Kajonpat Maklin, deputy director general (safety), Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand, said, “Our understanding of risk must go beyond borders” and that regional collaboration is not just about sharing data, but about sharing processes. “The value is not in the exchange, the value is in what we do next,” he said. The success of regional collaboration should be measured by improvements and decisions made and not by volume of data exchanged, he said.

Capt. Mohd Radzi Bin Mohamad Alias, deputy CEO (Regulatory), Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia, said, “Do not let the fear of imperfection get in the way of sharing your safety data. We are all imperfect, but we want to improve ourselves.”

Saifon Obromsook, director, Safety Management Department, AEROTHAI, and chairperson of the Regional Airspace Safety Monitoring Advisory Group (RASMAG), said, “Investing in your people is very important, especially in your safety teams. To enhance collaboration, you need to build a passionate and curious team.”

A positive safety culture is more than a workshop and it’s not just on paper, it is a daily function, according to IFALPA President Capt. Ron Hay.

In a one-on-one fireside chat, Hay and Mark Searle, global director, Safety, International Air Transport Association, discussed the importance of reporting and getting away from the use of the term “just culture” in favor of positive safety culture. Just culture doesn’t translate well around the world, Searle said, noting that diffident regions have a different view of what “just” means. Hay said a positive safety culture is a safety management system collecting data and is a collaborative effort among stakeholders.

Hay stressed that the industry needs to move away from the idea of punishing people for mistakes. A positive safety culture in which employees feel comfortable reporting mistakes and incidents enables organizations to learn what the issues are and to take action.

If person is quiet and doesn’t raise their hand, they are costing the airline the ability to fix the problem, Hay said.

Artificial intelligence is a source of great opportunity to improve product safety and quality in aerospace, according to Vishwajeet Uddanwadiker, vice president/chief artificial intelligence and autonomy officer for Engineering Test and Technology, The Boeing Company. He said that a substantial portion of the industry’s safety performance improvement over the years has been due to technology innovation, and that the step with AI “leads us to believe we can do more.”

Among the opportunities he discussed is taking fleet data and data generated in the aftermarket and connecting it back to the design environment, which is an important feedback loop for Boeing.

If it is to meet its personnel needs in the future, the industry needs to make aviation careers more visible and attractive to candidates, and it needs to figure out how to keep individuals who enter the industry, according to speakers in Day 1’s final panel session.

Cheryl Chen, executive vice president, Asia Pacific, International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Associations, said, “Money does get attention, but if we only have money to attract people, our safety will be at risk.” She also said that people outside of aviation probably don’t know about many jobs in the industry, other than pilot and flight attendant. “Having visibility is very important,” she said.

Capt. Zoya Agarwal, senior commander, Air India, said that passion is deeply rooted in aviation and that passion is an essential component to attracting people to the industry. “When people join, they come with expectations; do we meet those expectations? We need to make people feel heard and feel like they belong,” she said.

Capt. Oscar Marion, flight operations expert pilot, Airbus, said employees need a good work life balance, need to feel like they are part of a team, and need to have a clear career path.