Aviation professionals who operate or manage flights for the world’s natural resource sector — an industry focused on onshore exploration and extraction of minerals, metals, oil and gas — face unusual risks, particularly in remote environments (ASW, 11/13). Best practices developed for scheduled airlines, however, increasingly influence strategic and tactical decisions at resource sector companies, says a safety specialist with cross-industry experience.
Geoff Want, group adviser, aviation safety, for Rio Tinto and co-chair of the Technical Advisory Committee of Flight Safety Foundation’s Basic Aviation Risk Standard (BARS) Program, calls standardization of the sector’s remote-operations risk mitigation during the past four years “a real step forward.” Rio Tinto, a BARS Program benefactor member, has a single set of principles and standards that individual mines and projects apply to their own …
