ACI World Report - June 2011 - Airports Council International

ACI World Report - June 2011
L - R: Angela Gittens, Director General ACI World; Graham
Lake, Director General CANSO; Guenther Matschnigg,
Senior Vice President IATA; Nancy Graham, Director Air
Navigation Bureau ICAO; Paul McCarthy, Representative
to ICAO IFALPA; Tao Ma, First Vice President of the ICAO
Council.
which form an integral part of the airport’s
overall Safety Management System. She also
stated that safety training and best practice
sharing are key elements of a successful runway
safety improvement strategy. ACI believes that
incidents and accidents must be investigated
fully and lessons learned, and that safety team
should assess all actual and potential risks and
causal factors, and provide defenses against
them. The airport operator must be committed
to this strategy as the management of the safety
team can be quite an onerous activity in staff
time.
Angela Gittens unveiled the new programme
developed by ACI Airport Excellence (or APEX)
in Safety.
ACI Press Release on Airport Excellence in Safety
ACI World Director General Angela Gittens,
speaking this week at the ICAO Global Runway
Safety Symposium in Montreal, announced a
new global safety programme called Airport
Excellence in Safety (APEX) designed to help
airports worldwide to identify and address safety
vulnerabilities.
Click HERE for full Press Release8
Gittens says, “As ICAO statistics indicate,
runway excursions are both the most frequent
and the most deadly type of runway accidents
that occur. APEX provides a platform to assist
our member airports in that goal. “But to drive
down the number and severity of incidents,
all those involved in safety at the airport must
work together to meet that objective – including
airports, airlines, pilots, air traffic controllers and
the many people on the ground who contribute
to delivering safe travel. This close collaboration
is critical in order to reduce the potential for
accidents and improve airport response in case
of an incident. APEX programme components
(www.aci.aero8) build on ICAO principles of
airport certification in line with Annex 14 and
Safety Management Systems (SMS), as well
as information transparency. To learn from
experience, an APEX database for incident
information sharing will be based on a nonpunitive,
‘just culture’ environment. ACI will
facilitate a ‘Safety Partners’ network to promote
mutual assistance. Gittens says, “Our good
fortune in the airport business is that airports
come in all shapes and sizes…literally. By pairing
and partnering within the airport community,
we share strengths and knowledge and speed
progress on operational and safety management
targets.”
At the end of the Symposium the following
issues were agreed:
The International organizations represented
(“Runway Safety Programme partners”)
committed to work together to compile and
promote proven solutions and endorse best
practices, and that:
• Runway Safety Teams should be
established locally and hosted by the
airports; this important role for the airport
operator was agreed
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