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CAD Safety Management Workshop – A platform for the aviation community to enhance safety management

By Ms. Michelle Ho, Manager, Standards & Service Delivery Section, Airfield Department, Airport Authority Hong Kong

A heartfelt thank you to the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department (CAD) for organising a safety management workshop on 30 January 2019 for professionals of the local aviation community.  Colleagues from different disciplines of the Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK) jumped at the opportunity to get a better understanding of ICAO recent development of safety management.

Ms. Manoosh Valipour from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), who was speaker of the workshop, provided practical advice on aviation safety performance management from a data-driven decision making perspective.  Aviation safety practitioners can make use of safety data to strike a balance between technical compliance and business performance in making decision on safety management issues.  The workshop also provided insights to the use of reactive data and proactive data in setting more practical indicators to proactively manage risks and prevent incidents and accidents.

We were also introduced to ICAO’s latest development in safety performance monitoring techniques using data visualisation.   Real time flight data was used to illustrate how clearly defined key performance indicators could reflect potential issues affecting runway safety and help identify safety actions required. 

As a member of AAHK’s Standards & Service Delivery Section responsible for ensuring compliance with aerodrome licensing requirements, I was amazed to note that representatives from different sectors of the local aviation community participated in the workshop.  It was a good opportunity for our aviation community to keep updated on the development in safety trend analysis and the new ICAO tools which can reflect safety performance taking into consideration capacity and efficiency of air navigation.  We share the view that the timely reporting of occurrences and sharing of safety data in Safety Management System (SMS) are important to the effective implementation of the State Safety Programme (SSP).  The entire aviation community needs to collaborate to achieve effective safety performance management.   

The Hong Kong International Airport soared to new heights in 2018 with annual passenger and cargo volume reached 74.7 million and 5.1 million tonnes respectively. Safety is therefore, instrumental in maintaining Hong Kong’s position as a global aviation hub.   The AAHK concurs with ICAO’s strategic objective of improving the safety of the global air transport system, and will continue to render our full support to CAD in ensuring continuous improvement in safety performance monitoring.   

Once again we congratulate the CAD on organising such a successful workshop and looking forward to many more to come.