Aviation Africa: Safety perception in Africa

“Safety is no accident, but no accident is not safety.” This was a comment from the floor during a lively safety session at Aviation Africa 2015. This summed up the collective call for operators to step beyond their minimum legal safety requirements and for regulators to receive more training to assist them in their challenging role.

“I would invite you to change your mindset that African regulators are bad; African regulators are good,” Aviation Africa panellist and South African Airways (SAA) head of flight operations Sandy Bayne (right) said during his intervention, arguing that regulators are much-maligned given their tough operating environment and limited resources. No regulator goes into work with the intention of making life difficult for airlines, he said, crediting the South African authorities for being extremely responsive to SAA’s requests.

Bayne called for a shift towards performance-based regulation, where regulators give operator an objective to meet, rather than hard, inflexible rules. “The outcome is defined and not the process,” he explained. This new approach, which is also being pursued in Europe, would involve extra training for regulators. If airlines want to benefit, they may have to put their hands in their pockets and sponsor this additional cost.

Additional training is also needed for the implementation of the Abuja Declaration, which calls for all African operators to secure IATA IOSA safety certification by the end of 2015. Meeting this target will be tough, as many regulators were not aware of how much work is involved.

Richard Howard from Howard Consulting Group is an IATA-registered instructor. He urged airlines to set their own high safety standards, rather than relying on their regulators too heavily. “Is your regulator telling you how to run your airline, or are you running your airline,” he asked. “We’re having to take people from base level and take to IATA standard. If you want to join the IATA club, you have to adhere to the dress code. It’s not impossible, but it’s going to take work. This isn’t rocket science; it’s aircraft science,” said

But there are other standards, beyond the regulatory minimums. UN World Food Programme head of safety Middle East and Africa Capt. Samir Sajet puts operators through an audit before using them for his humanitarian missions, which currently span 19 African nations. “We need the job to be done safely. We don’t want to add another disaster to the one we already have,” he said.

Sajet called on African airlines to truly understand their risk profile, which is unique to each operator, and for regulators to receive further training. He also questioned why there is no African safety training institute.

Boeing director aviation safety for Africa and Middle East Chamsou Andjorin used his air time to call for a more integrated approach to safety. “If safety is seen as supplemental to the business process, it is doomed to failure,” he said. According to Andjorin, five pillars are needed for a safe, reliable and profitable air transport system. These are a stable market environment, regulatory capacity, infrastructure, airline capacity and aircraft capacity.

Africa could also benefit from more unified safety oversight. “You can’t have 54 CAAs,” he said, suggesting that not every nation on the continent needs its own regulator. “If you are regulating an industry with just 10 aircraft, you don’t learn much.” Earlier on in the conference, it was suggested that only seven African countries have a large enough air transport industry to justify having their own oversight.

Gates Aviation director Jo Gillespie called on delegates to define what a regulation is. “It is a minimum acceptable standard before you are illegal,” he said. “If this is your target, you are going to fail.” He also asked conference attendees to come up with ways to challenge the negative perception of African aviation. The continent may be bottom of the world safety leaderboard, but it is still pretty safe, he argued. “We have a room full of ambassadors. We must all take that message away with us.”

Mark ‏Spicer, managing director of start-up Bluesky Airways, suggested greater promotion of IATA compliance. “Do people understand that IATA is a safety standard? People need to know IATA has much more meaning than membership of an association,” he said.

“Safety has improved, but perception has not improved in line with that,” summed up Aviation Africa moderator and AviAssist Foundation director Tom Kok.