National governments around the world must press for adoption of the Safer Skies Initiative, designed to prevent the shooting down of civilian aircraft, Salvatore Sciacchitano, president of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council, says.
Sciacchitano told the third Safer Skies Forum, which met in June in The Hague, that governments also should improve their sharing of technical expertise that will support Safer Skies.
“[T]he downing of an aircraft with innocent passengers and crew on board is absolutely unacceptable, the result of ineffective civil-military coordination, limited exchange of information, including a lack of intelligence information, and ultimately human error,” he said.
He emphasized that ICAO places high importance on addressing the risks that conflict zones present to civil aviation, citing several incidents in which civilian aircraft were shot down, including the Jan. 8, 2020, downing of Ukraine International Airli…
