Stronger Together: Sharing Lessons, Shaping Safety

Day 2 of IASS 2025 focused on sharing lessons, strengthening collaboration, and embracing innovation to enhance aviation safety. Speakers emphasized the importance of learning from all operations, supporting the next generation, and working together to build a safer, more resilient industry.

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In the spirit of not competing on safety, lessons learned by one company should be shared across the industry, TAP Air Portugal CEO Luis Rodrigues said Wednesday in his Day 2 keynote address at IASS 2025. “In safety, the learning of anyone must be the learning of all,” he said, noting that in the aviation industry, stakeholders must simultaneously compete fiercely and cooperate fiercely.

The industry is going through a challenging period that can be traced to three primary factors, he said. The first, which he described as “long COVID part 1,” is the loss of an enormous amount of experience and knowledge that occurred when many seasoned personnel left the industry as a result of the pandemic.

The second, “long COVID part 2,” revolves around the impact on the industry of its rapid post-COVID recovery and the need to quickly recruit and train new personnel to keep up with market demand.

The third factor is the continuous rise of uncertainty and volatility, including issues with the supply chain, air traffic control shortages, airport capacity issues, environmental impacts, increased regulation, and the closing of airspace in and around conflict zones.

The combination of these three broad factors has not created an environment for the industry to thrive, Rodrigues said. It is easy to believe that management and stakeholders are feeling increased pressure on the bottom line that could lead to risky decisions. “It’s up to the community of safety experts to make sure we don’t cut corners, to make sure we have people’s trust, and to make sure we maintain the status as the safest means of transport on the planet,” he said.

Insurance underwriters and the aviation organizations they insure against losses should work together to reduce attritional losses, panelists said Wednesday. “We’re not losing money on the major losses at the moment,” said Anthony Frankel, head of General Aviation, UK & Lloyd’s and Global CUO General Aviation AXA XL. “We’re losing money on the attritional losses at the moment,” he said.

Attritional losses, according to Frankel and Judith Connatty, Fuel and Insurance director, Air Europa, include damage to aircraft caused by ramp mishaps and by bird strikes. “As an insurance buyer, we get our claims paid by our insurers,” Connatty said, “but there is a tremendous amount [of cost] the airline bears that’s not covered by insurance.”

The panelists, including moderator Eduardo M. Dueri, Senior Partner, Safety & Operations Aviation Risk Solutions, and Managing Director, Gallagher Aerospace, Latin America Region, and Dan Boultwood, International Head Airline & Deductible, AIG, talked about stakeholders, including airports and ground handling companies as well as aircraft operators and insurers, collaboratively focusing on the top attritional loss drivers to improve safety and operational efficiency while reducing losses caused by ramp incidents.

The panelists also discussed the need for carriers to share data and information with their insurers. Insurers need the data so they can determine average performance and identify those who are above average. “We need to know what you’re doing differently so we can differentiate you from your peer group,” Frankel said.

Feedback loops are essential to effective safety management and to building resilience, Capt. Samir Kholi, Ph.D., founder and CEO of The Erring Human, said in his Wednesday morning Flash Talk. Feedback tells us what is making us safe and what is not working, Kohli said.

Kohli said that small systemic anomalies repeat over time. By detecting these anomalies and feeding them into a feedback loop, a safety system can forecast risk and trigger timely interventions. “A big one never comes out of the blue,” he said. There will always be minor events before a big event, so it is important to track the minor events to prevent the big one.

He also said that resilience is created through feedback loops and creating an optimal level of entropy for the desired complexity.

Delaying the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) poses an operational risk for organizations whose competitors – and in some cases, employees – are embracing the technology. “The train is already leaving the station,” said David Schöne, managing director, FlightGuardian Aviation Safety GmbH. “Every organization needs an AI readiness strategy.”

Schöne; Karl Steeves, CEO of TrustFlight; and Katie Cameron, COO of CoAnalyst, Comply365; discussed various ways AI could be leveraged to improve aviation safety, including the merging of various data sources, such as maintenance reports, weather feeds, and ground handling reports, in order to identify patterns in holistic ways.

If you want to know how work is actually done, talk to the people who do the work, said Capt. Nicholas Peterson of American Airlines during a wide-ranging discussion on the Learning From All Operations concept. “Ask them where the vulnerabilities are in the system; you’ll be amazed what comes back,” he said.

Work as imagined is how we think things are going to go, Peterson and other panelists said. Work as done is the practical reality of what that looks like. It often comes down to people filling in the gaps between work as imagined and work as done.

Experts from Japan Airlines, Spanish air navigation service provider ENAIRE, and Indian carrier IndiGo discussed how their organizations have adopted and are utilizing Learning From All Operations. “We found this [Learning From All Operations] extremely safety beneficial,” said Jesús Romero Hernández, Safety and Security Manager, ENAIRE. “We’d like to expand this with other ANSPs.”

The next generation doesn’t just include young people new to the aviation industry, but also people whose roles are changing in significant ways, according to Graham Braithwaite, Director, Aerospace and Aviation, Cranfield University.

Richard J. Kennedy, head of Learning Science & Human Performance, CAE–Civil Aviation Training, discussed leveraging line operations safety audit (LOSA) data to enhance current training and emphasized the need for standardized instructor training and assessments. We want to ensure that one instructor is assessing in the same way as another instructor, he said. CAE has been able to review telemetry data and compare it with ratings given by instructors and, if there is a discrepancy, provide feedback to the instructor.

Dr. Bilal Kilic, a captain and type rating instructor at Turkish Airlines, discussed competency, context, and culture as it applies to ab initio training. He said safety does not start in the airline; it starts in the early stages of flight training.

Flight Safety Foundation recognized two industry safety stalwarts for their many contributions to the aviation industry during the IASS Awards Dinner on Wednesday night.

Yannick Malinge, senior vice president and chief product safety officer at Airbus, received the Foundation’s Jerome Lederer Safety Leadership Medal in recognition of his visionary leadership in advancing aviation safety. Throughout his career, Malinge has been a driving force behind strengthening Airbus’s safety culture, setting new benchmarks for industrywide safety practices, and championing support for Airbus customers around the globe. Beyond his corporate role, he is widely respected for his mentorship of the next generation of safety leaders and his influence as a thought leader across the aviation industry.

Ratan Khatwa, executive technical fellow at The Boeing Co., received the Foundation’s David Morrison Innovation Award for his pioneering work in advancing flight deck technologies and aviation safety. During his career, much of which was spent at Honeywell, Khatwa helped drive the development of groundbreaking systems such as the enhanced ground-proximity warning system, advanced weather radar, synthetic vision, and runway safety alerting tools that are now standard in modern aviation. He has continued to shape the design and certification of integrated flight deck systems across a wide range of aircraft.

TrueNoord places firm order for 20 Embraer E195-E2 aircraft and secures purchase rights for up to 30 additional jets

Embraer and TrueNoord, the specialist regional aircraft leasing company, have signed a landmark agreement for 20 firm E195-E2 aircraft, plus purchase rights for up to 30 additional E-Jets.

The deal marks a major milestone as TrueNoord’s first-ever direct order with a manufacturer. For Embraer, the agreement is a powerful endorsement of the E2 family's market leadership and reinforces the growing global demand for next-generation, fuel-efficient small narrowbody aircraft. 

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