Podcasts

2023 Safety Forum Theme
“Knowledge, Skills and Experience for Safe Operations”

As demonstrated by the COVID-19 crisis, aviation industry resilience and vitality are in many areas constrained by the availability of suitably trained, qualified and experienced staff. The issue affects everyone – people on the sharp end in flight operations, maintenance, ground handling, air traffic control and airport personnel, as well as managers and other personnel on the blunt end. There has also been a loss of experience through normal retirement and through redundancies where alternative employment has proved more attractive than returning to aviation. At the same time, new realities in the industry and society, including paradigms for sustainable development, technological advances, new business models and new generations are bringing new demands for particular skills and knowledge.

We are interested in understanding:

• HUMANS FOR CURRENT SAFE OPERATIONS. What insights and experience can you offer on how to attract and retain the talent we need for safe aviation operations?
• HUMANS FOR FUTURE SAFE OPERATIONS. A changing industry will require different skills and knowledge than we have today. What are those? How should we proactively manage talent for future safe operations?
• THE PATH TO DIVERSITY. Diversity and inclusiveness are key values. They are also key drivers for resilience. What can you share about practical approaches to support diversity and inclusiveness for resilient and safe aviation operations? How do we achieve the diversity of thought that may lead to safety improvements and enhance resilience?

There are many questions we would like to discuss, including how the industry can best develop the broad range of knowledge, skills and experience required for safe operations, and what mitigations might be adopted to deal with staffing limitations, should these continue. Are we training on the right skills, and are regulatory knowledge requirements still appropriate? How do we know when we are ‘good enough’? What is the difference between competency and currency? How can we ensure competency? If we accept that some staff will be trained to a minimum standard, how should they be supervised? What proportion of new hires is acceptable before operations have to be curtailed to ensure that supervision and experience are not spread too thinly? What regulatory changes are needed? What structures do we need to put in place for bringing these new hires up to a higher performance level at a later date? What risks can be identified? What are the well-being considerations and demands on supervisors and others? How do we ensure cross-fertilisation of knowledge between the interdisciplinary actors? What is the best way to manage the inter-generational knowledge transfer?

There are more questions than answers here, but if you have ideas or an innovative approach that might address any of the problems in developing and retaining knowledge, skills and experience within our industry, we would like to hear from you.

Contact information:  Tzvetomir Blajev |  blajev@flightsafety.org