Cabin crews "have vital role in improving business aviation safety culture"

The warning came from the Corporate Aviation Safety Executive (CASE), a leading industry organisation focused on raising safety standards within the business aviation sector.

Made up of more than 40 operators, who collectively operate more than 300 aircraft in the business aviation sector, CASE encourages collaborative working and information sharing between its members as a means of driving up safety standards.
Its main tool for achieving this is a ground-breaking online platform, called Air Safety Central, where anyone connected with an airline can upload safety reports and share that information with their flying communities, including rival airlines.
Crucially, this can be done anonymously, eliminating any fears of reprisals or blame culture.
However, whilst incident reporting and data sharing by pilots is increasing thanks to Air Safety Central, contributions from cabin crew have been comparatively low, prompting calls for more to be done to draw those teams closer to the safety process.
Addressing a meeting of CASE members Bridget Quirk of CASE member Medair said: "There is no doubt whatsoever that cabin crew have an absolutely vital role to play in improving overall safety culture.
"However, there remains a fear that if they raise concerns or report a problem they will see the finger of blame pointed in their direction.
"What is required is an education process, both for cabin crews and their colleagues, to bring them more into the safety process and demonstrate that, rather than be singled out, by making a safety report they will in fact be making a valued contribution."
Air Safety Central was created for CASE by specialist aviation software developer Vistair Systems and the company's CEO, Ian Herbert, is a vocal advocate of making everyone within an airline, from the board to the ground crew, equally responsible for safety.
He explained that when Air Safety Central was created Vistair purposefully built in the principles that drive effective safety culture within airlines, so that anyone who uses the site feels empowered to make reports safe in the knowledge they are doing the right thing and won't be pilloried for it, adding that a special subsection just for cabin crew reports had now been added.
"In the year since its launch Air Safety Central has proved phenomenally successful in encouraging airline personnel to upload safety reports and share that information with their peers in a collaborative and supportive environment," he said.
"Any initiative that draws even more people, in this case cabin crew, to become more active on the site and thereby closer to the safety process can only succeed in driving standards even higher."