Melbourne, Australia, March 12, 2009 — Internationally respected aviation safety body, Flight Safety Foundation (FSF), today announced an expansion of its operations into the Pacific region through a consolidation with the Aviation Safety Foundation Australasia (ASFA).
The move sees the former ASFA’s operations absorbed into the Flight Safety Foundation’s organizational structure and the establishment of a FSF regional base in Melbourne, Australia. The joining of these two groups will bring significant benefits to the aviation industry in the region including increased access to the Foundation’s substantial range of technical programs and expertise.
It will also see greater activity by the Foundation within the region, including the establishment of a series of national Advisory Boards which will feed into an Asia Pacific Advisory Committee. This will provide a mechanism for the industry in the region to provide direct input into the Foundation’s global information gathering network on air safety.
Announcing the arrangement today at the Australian International Airshow 2009, Flight Safety Foundation President and CEO William R. Voss said:
“Our new office in Melbourne is an important part of our mission to spread aviation safety information as widely as possible. It not only puts us in a strong position to spread our safety message to the entire region, but we also can be used by the Australian aviation community to help spread their innovations to their aviation peers around the world.
“This is a part of the world that is growing quickly and we need to have a presence. I’m very pleased that the ASFA Board saw this opportunity and realized it would be a win-win for Australia and the rest of the aviation community.”
The initial geographical focus of the US-based Foundation’s first regional office will be Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.
Longer term the move is seen as a stepping stone to providing support to the industry in the broader Asia Pacific region.
Coordinating the FSF’s new regional team will be former Executive Director of ASFA, Paul Fox.
“As the industry comes under increasing financial pressure it becomes even more important that safety remains uppermost in people’s minds,” Mr Fox said.
“In Australia, the Government’s recent Aviation Policy Green Paper is to be commended for setting an example in the region by reinforcing safety as the number one priority for the industry.
“Today’s announcement by the Flight Safety Foundation creates a stronger independent voice on all matters of aviation safety in the region.”
Recent figures from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents 230 airlines comprising 93 per cent of scheduled international air traffic, reported the total number of fatalities from aviation accidents dropped from 692 in 2007 to 502 in 2008. However, the number of accidents increased from 200 in 2007, to 209 in 2008, with fatal accidents up from 20 in 2007, to 23 in 2008.
The Asia/Pacific region performed better than the global average of one accident per 1.2 million flights in 2008 with one accident per 1.7 million flights.
Asia/Pacific continues to be the fastest growing passenger market, with the top five fastest growing freight markets all having destinations in the AP region.
About Flight Safety Foundation:
Flight Safety Foundation is an independent non-profit international organization engaged in research, auditing, education, advocacy and publishing to improve aviation safety. The Foundation’s mission is to pursue the continuous improvement of global aviation safety and the prevention of accidents. The Foundation was created in 1947. That year, the Foundation organized the first civil aviation accident investigation workshop and sponsored the first international air safety seminar.
Over the years, FSF technical efforts have been instrumental in spurring worldwide recognition of the value of flight data recorders, aircraft anti-collision lights, aircraft rescue and fire fighting training and standardization of pilot training.
Other FSF achievements include:
- Produced landmark studies that formed the basis for medical standards for pilots and air traffic controllers;
- Pressed effectively for the use of weather radar in civil aircraft;
- Initiated the first international, safety-oriented and anonymous pilot-reporting system for civil aviation, which became the model for similar programs throughout the world;
- Conducted the first civil aircraft accident investigation training course;
- Completed the first computer modeling of the human body’s reactions to crash forces to improve passenger seat-restraint systems;
- Pioneered the collection and distribution of mechanical malfunction reports, a task now performed by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA);
- Conducted the first full-scale test of an aircraft-passenger air bag for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA);
- Created a crashworthy fuel system for helicopters;
- Declared the U.S. air traffic control system safe, after an exhaustive study following the national controllers’ union strike in 1981;
- Completed the first international agreement to exchange aviation safety information with a non-government U.S.S.R. (now the Commonwealth of Independent States) foundation.
- Led the first comprehensive international task force to reduce controlled-flight-into-terrain (CFIT) accidents;
- Created worldwide awareness of the hazards caused by bogus parts;
- Fostered U.S. implementation of flight operational quality assurance by the use of onboard digital flight data recorder information;
- Studied the benefits of head-up guidance systems to reduce landing accidents;
- Shared lessons learned from more than two decades of experience conducting safety audits of airlines and corporate flight departments;
- Published groundbreaking findings and recommendations of the FSF Approach-and-landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) Task Force and the FSF ALAR Tool Kit, a compact disc comprising a unique compilation of knowledge and safety products that help flight operations managers, chief pilots, flight crews, dispatchers and schedulers to further improve the safety of flight operations;
- Publishes one of the world’s best aviation safety resources: a four-color magazine AeroSafety World providing timely, clear and objective information that is highly valued for accuracy by international aviation professionals, the aviation press and mainstream news media; and,
- Conducts annually three safety seminars — the International Air Safety Seminar, the European Aviation Safety Seminar and the Corporate Aviation Safety Seminar — that encourage an open exchange of ideas among aviation decision makers in government, industry and academia; provide clear direction for the further reduction of risks in aviation; and generate published proceedings of each seminar’s most valuable information.
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Flight Safety Foundation is an independent, non-profit, international organization engaged in research, auditing, education, advocacy and publishing to improve aviation safety. The Foundation’s mission is to pursue the continuous improvement of global aviation safety and the prevention of accidents. www.flightsafetstg.wpenginepowered.com
Contact: Emily McGee, Director of Communications, 1-703-739-6700, ext. 126; mcgee@webdeva.flightsafety.org
