Last week hundreds of airline safety professionals and regulators from around the world gathered in Dublin, Ireland, for the Flight Safety Foundation’s 70^th annual International Safety Summit - IASS. Many thanks go to Air Lingus, the host sponsor and national airline of Ireland. 

Willie Walsh, chief executive of International Airlines Group (IAG) the parent company of Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia, LEVEL and Vueling, provided the opening day key note address.  

IASS has a heavy focus on flight operations, but safety and maintenance professionals spoke on a number of topics relating to maintenance safety, human factors, and SMS during Day Two's maintenance track. I was honored to have been one of those asked to speak.

Joe Barkley, president and CEO of Inflight Warning Systems and chair of the Foundation’s Maintenance Advisory Committee, opened the maintenance track with a discussion on key issues affecting maintenance safety. Subjects discussed throughout the day ranged from communication barriers between flight crews and maintenance personnel, to fatigue, voluntary reporting by technicians, safety management systems in airline maintenance organizations, and much more.  

I provided the audience with some of my observations relating to maintenance safety, and later in the day moderated a panel discussion on critical issues in aircraft maintenance.

A great deal of safety information was presented and I’ll provide a review of this year’s IASS at a later date.

Ron