Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues: welcome to the IATA World Safety and Operations Conference. It’s a pleasure to be in Istanbul, and I want to begin by thanking our host, Turkish Airlines, for the warm welcome.
Türkiye is an aviation powerhouse. International passenger departures have grown by nearly 70% over the past decade, making this the world’s seventh-largest market by passenger departures. And Istanbul itself is one of the world’s great global hubs.
That makes it a fitting place for the conversations we need to have this week. Because complexity is where people, technology, and standards either work together — or they don’t.
Where we stand
Let me begin with the numbers, because they tell two stories. The first is one of real achievement.
A decade ago, the industry recorded one fatal accident for every 3.5 million flights. In 2025 it was one for every 5.6 million. That progress was earned — through global standards, data, and cooperation.
But the numbers also tell us there is more work to do. Despite the real progress on making aviation safer, in 2025 there were 394 onboard fatalities. Each of those means that, even with the high level of safety at which we operate, we must work even harder to make flying even safer.
So, the question for us is: where does the next step change in safety come from? The answer lies in looking at how three things work together:
- People
- Technology
- Standards
They are integral parts of a safety system.
Consider the runway. While runway accidents are rare, they remain the most common location for accidents and incidents. People, technology, and standards each play a vital role.
People provide the clearances to enter the runway, pilot the aircraft, and manage the ground equipment that share its space. Technology gives everyone the best possible situational visibility. And standards guide the actions of everyone involved. Individually, none are up to the task of keeping runways safe. But together, they are a powerful system supporting runway safety.
In unpacking our conference theme, I’d like to look at these three important system components and the challenges that we must address together.
People
The theme of this conference is “Performance Through People”. That’s because people are the critical enablers to ensure the system works as it should.
The constant challenge of enabling the best in people is being exacerbated by demographics. For various reasons we have a disproportionately large number of senior safety professionals who will exit the industry in the coming years. We will need to retain their know-how and knowledge as they move towards and into retirement.
Specifically, we have spent decades building something genuinely rare: a positive safety culture in which people report their own errors, and mistakes become opportunities for everyone to learn from.
That culture was nurtured deliberately over many years and it’s critical that, as one generation moves on, the next takes over the mantle and builds on what has gone before.
So ask yourself: in your organization, who is passing that knowledge on? Is mentoring someone’s job? Or does it happen by accident, in the gaps?
That question becomes even more important as a new generation enters aviation. They bring the advantage of being accustomed to working alongside technology and increasingly, artificial intelligence.
They will surely bring new perspectives on how technology can strengthen our industry. Those capabilities must be successfully integrated with the operational, technical, and safety competencies that aviation demands.
This is an opportunity. But realizing its benefits requires a mindset that balances an appreciation for safety fundamentals with openness to change.
Human intuition, judgment, and decision-making must evolve alongside new tools, while avoiding, at all costs, the erosion of skills through overreliance on technology. To be blunt: a safety professional who has only ever seen the output of a theoretical model must know when to question it in a live, dynamic operation.
And there is another pressure on our culture and ability to learn. A strong positive safety culture depends on people being willing to report errors, hazards, and near misses. That principle is reflected in ICAO's Safety Management framework and given legal force in Europe through Regulation (EU) 376/2014's provisions on safety culture and occurrence reporting.
And when it is not followed, problems arise. For example, in the Netherlands, air traffic controllers were prosecuted following an occurrence they had reported. The European Commission later documented that occurrence reporting fell seriously in the aftermath. That experience helped drive stronger protections and greater cooperation between safety and judicial authorities.
Back to the runway
Another important consideration around the role of people in safety is how we communicate. Standard phraseology is a cornerstone of safety. But, even in the highly regulated aviation environment, over time small departures from standard practice can become routine – that ‘normalization of deviance’ as coined by Lord Justice Sir Charles Haddon-Cave.
Phraseology can get shortened because it feels efficient and is well understood. Airports and air traffic control are busy, high pressured, and in time-sensitive environments where everyone is focused on keeping traffic moving. The fundamental core of the operation success is a systematic approach. Many small deviations may cause no harm. But from the safety perspective, our focus must always be on the one time that a small deviation can contribute to a catastrophic conclusion.
Deviations are not simply pilot issues or controller issues. They are system issues that deserve our full attention.
That is why IATA, CANSO, and ACI launched a Joint Runway Safety Initiative this year — to capture exactly these kinds of early signals through Local Runway Safety Teams, before they add up to something worse. And I am very pleased that Andrea Sack, SVP, Global Operations, CANSO is with us this week to take that work forward.
Technology
Technology matters because it helps people make better decisions.
For decades, aviation has become safer not by removing people from the system, but by giving them better information, better tools, and a better understanding of risk. That should remain our guiding principle. The question is not simply, "Can this be automated?" The more important question is, "Will it help people operate more safely and effectively?"
The value of technology lies in the information it provides. Better information helps us identify risk earlier, understand it more clearly, and take action before an incident becomes an accident.
That is why data sharing has become such a powerful safety tool. IATA's Turbulence Aware program received more than 65 million reports on turbulence from aircraft this year. SafetyIS draws operational safety data from 248 airline contributors, helping to identify emerging risks and trends across the industry. And IATA Connect brings together 5,600 users from more than 600 organizations to share information, experience, and best practices.
The objective is the same in every case: see risk earlier, share what we learn, and make better decisions.
But technology alone is never enough. The aviation system must remain resilient when technology is unavailable, degraded, or provides misleading information.
The rise in GNSS interference demonstrates why. Compared with 2023, reported jamming events increased by 67% in 2025, while reported GPS spoofing incidents rose by 193%. During a spoofing event, an aircraft can receive positioning information that appears entirely credible but is, in fact, false.
The lesson is not that GNSS has failed. The safety and efficiency benefits delivered by GNSS have been transformational. Rather, it reminds us that technology must always be supported by system resilience. When GNSS information cannot be relied upon, safety depends on layered defenses: redundancy, procedures, training, and crew judgment.
That gives us three useful tests for any new technology:
- Does it help people understand what is happening around them?
- Does it support better decision-making?
- And can the operation remain safe if the technology is unavailable or compromised?
With EASA, we launched a GNSS Resilience Plan focused on better monitoring, prevention, backup infrastructure, and civil-military coordination. ICAO has since taken this work forward, condemning State-origin interference and establishing a roadmap for action. The task now is implementation.
Because identifying a risk is only the first step. The real test is whether we can turn insight into action and improve the way we operate.
And that brings me to global standards.
Standards
In many of our biggest safety challenges, the problem is not the absence of standards. It is inconsistent implementation and oversight.
Again, the numbers tell the story. In 2025, airlines on the IOSA registry recorded one accident for every 1.09 million flights. For non-IOSA operators, it was one accident for every 0.39 million flights - about 2.79 times higher.
An audit alone does not explain that difference. But the gap illustrates the value of a common global standard backed by effective oversight. A passenger’s safety should not depend on where an airline happens to be based. That is the principle behind IOSA.
The same logic applies at State level. A well-resourced and effective USOAP serves every one of us. ICAO itself has identified two obstacles for 2026 to 2028: safety oversight authorities without sufficient funding, and shortages of qualified technical personnel.
Those are not abstract governance concerns. They help explain why a standard written in Montreal does not always become practice on a taxiway.
We cannot close every resourcing gap from this room. But we can make better use of the oversight capacity we have.
And there is progress.
ICAO has accepted our recommendation that evidence from its State safety audits should feed back into the standard-setting process. That will help ensure that standards reflect the risks States are actually encountering, and that limited oversight resources are directed towards the areas where they can make the greatest difference.
The same principle drives risk-based IOSA, focusing audits on an airline’s actual risk profile.
Risk-based IOSA is already generating results, with nearly 14,000 findings and 6,000 observations identified from January 2025 to today. That is oversight doing what it should: finding weaknesses before they become accidents.
But better industry oversight will only deliver its best if states are also complying with their international obligations. Two areas need particular attention.
The first is conflict zones. Civil aviation needs timely, transparent and coordinated information about airspace risks. Operators cannot make good decisions without it. And, unfortunately, such information is often deficient.
The second is accident reporting. Between 2020 and 2024, only 52% of accident reports were completed in line with State obligations under Annex 13. When a report is delayed, safety lessons are delayed too. And when authoritative information is missing, speculation fills the gap.
In the spirit of a positive safety culture, I am not here to assign blame. These are both serious concerns. And our aim should be to find out why states are not complying with these critical global standards so that we can find solutions.
A parallel agenda is that of taking action when standards are no longer useful because of changes in technology, operations or regulation, we should update it or remove it. Good standards evolve with the industry they serve.
Europe's simplification agenda is welcome. Florian Guillermet, Executive Director, EASA is with us this week, and I hope we can take that forward together.
So the next step change in safety will not come simply from writing more standards. It will come from making sure the standards we already have are understood, implemented and overseen — consistently, everywhere.
Conclusion
So let me close where I began — back to the runway. Think about a runway incursion.
It can be prevented by a controller and pilot communicating clearly — and working in a culture where either can say "say again" without hesitation. It can be prevented by technology that spots a developing conflict and alerts someone while there is still time to act. And it can be prevented by an airport built, operated, and overseen to global standards.
People. Technology. Standards. Not three priorities to pursue independently, but three parts of the same safety system. When one is weak, the resilience of the whole system is reduced.
And that is where the next step change will come from. Not from any one of the three on its own, but from making all three work better together.
Over the next three days, this room holds an extraordinary amount of operational experience. Use it. Challenge each other. Share what works — and what doesn't. The sessions matter. But so do the conversations between them.
Our goal has not changed: zero accidents and zero fatalities.
I wish you all a productive and successful conference. Thank you.
