Gulf airlines safety meeting

The Gulf Flight Safety Council, the second Gulf Flight Data Forum meeting was held last week, hosted by Emirates Airline.
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The meeting was held over two days with six airlines sharing statistical flight data on the first day, while the second day was open to all airlines based in the general region who operated a Flight Data Monitoring programme.


The statistical flight data sharing provided valuable insights for the participants of day one. Specifically, by sharing it gave them a benchmark to compare their statistical values to other airlines. Possible causes of the differences in statistical values gave an indication on how improvements could be made to specific areas of monitoring or risk.


On the second day the discussion on benchmarking was expanded on how to set safety performance indicators using flight data. FDM techniques and best practices were reviewed and it was identified that most operators face similar issues in extracting safety-enhancing information from flight data and integrating the information directly into their Safety Management software. Direct contacts between flight data analysts were established, enabling them to more easily solve technical issues. Apart from discussions pertaining to the technicalities of collecting, decoding and validating flight data, common tools and statistical analysis techniques were presented.


The meeting members agreed that following international trends, enhanced regional industry regulation and oversight would likely see regional regulators require greater visibility of flight data monitoring programmes. The Gulf Flight Data Forum presents a good forum to aid operators in establishing industry “best practice” programmes.


The next two-day meeting is planned for March 2014 immediately prior to the next GFSC meeting. Those operators wanting further information on this regional initiative may contact hasan.mir@emirates.com or dave.stobie@emirates.com for details.