Safety

Our approach to safety management is multifaceted, as we seek to serve and support our Member States and stakeholders’ diverse range of needs and priorities while meeting passengers’ expectations of safety. All this entails:

• promoting a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of all the dimensions of safety;
• learning from consequence-less incidents and accidents;
• promoting a blame-free culture;
• sharing data and best practices for the benefit of airspace users and the entire aviation community.

We encourage a system-focused approach to help make sense of – and improve – system performance.

Our Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC) works to deliver safe and efficient cross-border air navigation services. Our comprehensive safety management system and a robust safety culture contribute to an excellent safety record. Staff with safety-related tasks are appropriately trained and their competences systematically assessed and maintained. “Safety culture” and “just culture” principles are an integral part of the Centre’s work, and staff proactively promote them. We follow up without delay on incidents and occurrences with a safety impact and further reduce risks by incorporating safety and human factors in the development of new ATM systems and services.

Our safety activities build on several principles including “just culture”, “safety culture”, “human performance” and "human factors”, which we have introduced and/or actively promote through an extensive range of information initiatives. These concepts underpin a systemic view of safety, and innovate the way organisations approach and deal with it. Given a system with definite goals, actors have a wider perspective that now takes account of the interactions among the various components - human, social, technical, information, political, economic and organisational - of the system. By extending the operational to a cultural level, we contribute to actively encouraging safety-culture changes in ATM organisations in Europe and worldwide.

Our audience includes:

• +28,000 subscribers (to SKYbrary and HindSight);
• +1,600 participants (at IANS training courses);
• +250 attendees at our annual Safety Forum.

On behalf of the military aviation community, we keep abreast of new safety regulations and the latest improvements in this field.

Our experts monitor all safety aspects with a view to highlighting potential implications for the sector. They promote information-sharing and coordination among military stakeholders and apply EUROCONTROL’s military expertise to safety-related working arrangements.

Our safety research activities support ATM and aviation by harnessing the best of safety research, making sure it benefits operational organisations.

Through our strong collaboration with the European Commission and EASA, as well as our involvement in the OPTICS2 project, which evaluates leading edge safety research globally, we help a growing number of air navigation service providers, airlines and airports to improve safety culture, safety intelligence and operational safety.

We do this in flagship EU-funded safety research projects such as OPTICS, Future Sky Safety and SAFEMODE.

Through our joint work programme with the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), we make our expertise available to help implement a single European safety regulatory framework.

By doing so, we contribute to the safer evolution of the European sky.