The International Air Transport Association (IATA), along with three governmental aviation safety organisations, has signed an agreement to launch the Global Safety Information Exchange. Creating a comprehensive global information exchange to improve safety is the most ambitious private/public safety partnership in aviation history.
IATA, together with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the US Department of Transportation (DOT), and Commission of the European Union (EC), signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to create the framework and path forward to launch the Global Safety Information Exchange. The signing of the MoU took place following the opening session of ICAO Assembly and was signed by Giovanni Bisignani, Director General and CEO, IATA; Raymond Benjamin, Secretary General, ICAO; Ray LaHood, Secretary, US DOT and Siim Kallas, Vice President, EU.
A steering group will be formed and will have representatives from each of the four organisations. ICAO will act as the coordinator of the information exchange. The four organisations will start their cooperation by selecting safety information each group currently collects, which would be the most relevant to the goal of improving safety by risk reduction. IATA will make the largest contribution of airline data by providing de-identified information from the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) programme. This will include de-identified information from the 345 airlines that are on the IOSA registry (230 IATA members and 115 non-members). IOSA sets the standard of safety for airlines and aggregated IOSA audit information will complement audit information from the other partners in developing global safety priorities.
"Air is the safest way to travel. We achieved this level of safety precisely because governments and industry have cooperated transparently to identify risks and implement solutions. Today's agreement takes the long history of cooperation to a new level by tearing down silos around the data that we have and sharpening our focus on the greatest risks to aviation safety," said Bisignani.
"We have a long history of working together with governments using global standards to lower the accident rate. In 1945, there were nine million passengers and 247 fatalities. In 2009, 2.3 billion people flew with 685 fatalities. Every fatality is a human tragedy and reminds us that we must do better. Today's agreement signals a new era of multilateral cooperation between industry and government to make the skies safer," added Bisignani.
The 2009 global accident rate, measured in hull losses per million flights of Western-built jet aircraft, was 0.71. Through the first six months of 2010, the accident rate was 0.64. Compared to ten years ago, the accident rate has been cut 36 per cent from the 1.11 rate recorded in 2000.