The International Air Transport Association (IATA) highlighted the need for stronger integration of people, technology, and global standards to deliver the next advances in aviation safety.
“Aviation is safer today than it was a decade ago. In that timeframe, fatal accident rates have improved from one accident per 3.5 million flights to one per 5.6 million flights. But 2025 still saw the loss of 394 lives in aviation accidents. Every fatality strengthens our resolve to do better. The next advance in safety will come from people, technology, and standards working together better as one resilient system,” said Mark Searle, IATA’s Director of Safety, speaking at the opening of the IATA World Safety and Operations Conference 2026 in Istanbul.
People: Preserving Knowledge and Fostering a Strong Aviation Safety Culture
Three priorities were identified to sustain and strengthen aviation’s safety performance as a new generation of aviation professionals brought up in the digital age rises in the workforce:
- Structured knowledge transfer: Preserving decades of operational expertise through structured mentoring, training and succession planning.
- Combining experience with new capabilities: Bringing together the operational knowledge of experienced professionals with the digital skills and artificial intelligence (AI) fluency of a new generation.
- Protecting safety culture: Maintaining an environment in which people can report hazards, errors and near misses without fear, enabling the industry to learn, improve and prevent future incidents.
“We have spent decades building something genuinely rare: a positive safety culture in which people report their own errors, and mistakes become opportunities for everyone to learn from. That culture was nurtured deliberately over many years, and it is critical that, as one generation moves on, the next takes over the mantle and builds on what was done before,” said Searle.
Technology: Innovation Must Strengthen Safety
The adoption of new technologies, including AI, should be assessed against three key tests:
- Does it help safety professionals understand what is happening around them?
- Does it support better decision-making?
- Can the operation remain safe if the technology is unavailable or compromised?
“Technology can give us critical information that helps us identify risk earlier, understand it more clearly, and take action before an incident becomes an accident. But technology alone is never enough. The aviation system must remain resilient when technology is unavailable, degraded, or provides misleading information. The rise in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference is a reminder that technology must always be supported by redundancy, procedures, training, and human judgment,” said Searle.
Standards: Consistent Implementation Drives Aviation Safety
The strong safety performance of airlines on the IOSA registry demonstrates the value of common global standards backed by effective oversight. Despite this positive example, today many of aviation’s biggest safety challenges stem from inconsistent implementation and oversight, rather than a lack of global standards.
“The next step change in safety will not come from writing more standards. It will come from making sure the standards we already have are understood, implemented and overseen consistently, everywhere,” said Searle.
IATA identified three actions for strengthening the effectiveness of global standards:
- Improve implementation and oversight by focusing limited resources on the areas of greatest risk and ensuring standards are applied consistently across the aviation system.
- Strengthen State compliance with international obligations, particularly in the areas of conflict zone risk information and accident reporting.
- Keep standards relevant by simplifying, modernizing and updating requirements to reflect changes in technology, operations and the regulatory environment.
“People, technology, and standards must reinforce one another. That’s true whether we are addressing runway safety, GNSS interference, conflict zones or accident investigations. When one of these pillars is weak, the resilience of the entire system is reduced,” said Searle.
