AERO - Collaborating on Safety

Working together to make a safe global air transportation system even safer.

By Mike Denton, Vice President of Engineering, Boeing Commercial Airplanes

Ensuring safe air travel is our primary focus at Boeing as we design, build, test, deliver, and support our airplanes. Boeing airplanes are designed to be inherently safe, but we know that air transportation safety also depends on safe operation and proper maintenance and training. For that reason, we are committed to working with our airline customers, industry associations, and governments to make a safe global air transportation system even safer.

We firmly believe a collaborative approach to safety is more effective than regulatory action alone. Aviation safety is the result of regulatory oversight combined with how airplanes are designed and produced, how crews operate and maintain them, and how the air traffic and airport infrastructure support them. To enhance system safety, a deep understanding of how our products are used in service — coupled with a strong understanding of how they are designed and built, including our supplier-provided commodities — is essential to improving operational requirements and product design. By working together — as members of industry, civil aviation associations, government regulatory authorities, and operators — we can help ensure safety efforts are effective and aligned worldwide.

One recent safety effort is the Global Aviation Safety Roadmap featured in this edition of AERO. The Global Aviation Safety Roadmap is a blueprint for coordinating and guiding safety policies and initiatives worldwide.

Its purpose is to reduce the accident risk for commercial aviation, avoid duplication of efforts and uncoordinated strategies, and encourage close industry and government cooperation on common safety objectives. One of its main objectives is to help all regions of the world achieve the high levels of excellence maintained by the regions with the best aviation safety performance.

Another industry effort to improve safety involves sharing more in-service airplane operational data. Traditional safety efforts have relied on investigating past accidents to prevent future ones; however, the aviation community is evolving toward a more predictive approach by examining operational data to identify less obvious or emerging patterns and potential conditions before accidents occur. This approach relies on all aviation stakeholders freely sharing and combining data (and assumes agreement among all parties that the information is protected from inappropriate use). You can read more about this effort in this issue.

Within Boeing, we are using in-service airplane performance data to review, update, and enhance the designs of our commercial jets. We also are developing new systems and technologies to enhance the safety of the air transportation system. We are committed to developing safety improvements throughout the world by providing technical expertise gained from decades of experience.

MIKE DENTON
Vice President of Engineering,
Boeing Commercial Airplanes