IATA Director General, Willie Walsh
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has announced that 73 airlines have committed to its Safety Leadership Charter, focusing on passenger and airline staff safety.
IATA said the charter was created in collaboration with airlines worldwide and aviation community members, with the goal to encourage safety cultures through eight principles.
The principles include: Reinforcing safety through both words and actions; Fostering safety awareness among employees, the leadership team, and the board; Guiding the integration of safety into business strategies, processes, and performance measures; and Creating the internal capacity to proactively manage safety and collectively achieve organisational safety goals.
Other principles include: Creating an atmosphere of trust, where all employees feel responsible for safety and are encouraged and expected to report safety-related information; Establishing a working environment in which clear expectations of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors are communicated and understood; Creating an environment where all employees feel responsibility for safety; and Regularly assessing and improving an organisational safety culture.
IATA said 2023 was the best year ever in the commercial aviation industry, noting that last year, no member airlines registered any fatalities, and not one crash occurred on a jet-engine aircraft. A turboprop aircraft crashed in Nepal in January; an ATR 72 operated as Yeti Airlines Flight 691.
IATA’s Director General, Willie Walsh, said: “Strong leadership and strong safety culture are interdependent. And both are needed to drive continuous improvements in safety performance. By putting their names to the IATA Safety Leadership Charter, 73 airline CEOs have set an example for their airlines and for the industry. In doing so, the Charter is a call to action that keeps in focus the critical obligation of airline CEOs to lead a safety culture that keeps their passengers and staff safe.”
In explaining the charter, the global body said the three major points of IATA’s strategy for improving safety in the industry, were safety leadership, safety risk, and safety connect.
“First, IATA hopes to encourage safety cultures worldwide, which Boeing leadership has discussed since the major Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 door plug blowout in January. Safety risk means that collecting and analyzing data can identify and mitigate risks. Safety connect encourages a transparent culture, enabling leaders to report, discuss, and resolve safety concerns,” the global association said.
IATA had also announced strengthened profitability projections for airlines in 2024 compared with its June and December 2023 forecasts and remarked that an aggregate return above the cost of capital, however, continues to elude the global airline industry.
The outlook highlights indicated that net profits are expected to reach $30.5 billion in 2024 (3.1 per cent net profit margin). That will be an improvement on 2023 net profits which are estimated to be $27.4 billion (3.0 per cent net profit margin). It is also an improvement on the $25.7 billion (2.7 per cent net profit margin) forecast for 2024 profits that IATA released in December 2023.
