IATA: Despite disappearance of MH370, flying is incredibly safe

Flying is incredibly safe, an organization representing airlines worldwide asserted in Qatari capital Doha on Monday amid growing suspense over the disappearance of a Malaysian plane with 239 people aboard nearly three months ago.
“In 2013, there were 29 million flights with Western-built jet aircraft and only 12 hull losses. And we are determined to improve on this performance,” said Tony Tyler, director general and CEO of the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
He said: “Alongside achieving stronger financial performance we face the constant challenge of safety. It’s been our top priority right from the beginning. I’m told that the aircraft that carried the first paying passenger 100 years ago was even nicknamed Safety First.”
Tyler’s comments were made in his "State of the Industry" address to the 70th IATA annual general meeting and World Air Transport Summit in Doha, Qatar.
Tyler said: “The IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) is an example. Qatar Airways was the first carrier to meet its global standards and join the IOSA registry. Today, 393 airlines are on the registry.”
As a group, Tyler said their safety performance is significantly better than the average for airlines that have not completed IOSA.
The IATA represents 240 airlines carrying 84 percent of all passengers and cargo worldwide.
“We are making IOSA an even more effective standard,” Tyler said.
“Enhanced-IOSA will change the audit from a snapshot of an airline’s safety management into a system for constant monitoring. And it will be a requirement for all IATA airlines from 2015,” he said.
In his keynote address, Tyler discussed several challenges that the industry and government partners face as commercial aviation begins its second century.
He added: “The loss of MH370 points us to an immediate need. A large commercial airliner going missing without a trace for so long is unprecedented in modern aviation. And it must not happen again.”
He said that IATA, ICAO and experts from around the world were working together to agree on the best options to improve global tracking capabilities. In September, a draft of recommendations will be given to ICAO.
The IATA chief said: “Data will guide this and other safety improvements. We are moving forward with the Global Aviation Data Management project — known as GADM. This will create the world’s largest resource of operational information. Fueled by data collected from partners, including ICAO, the FAA, and EASA, it is perfectly consistent with the global mindset needed for aviation’s second century.”
Tyler said: “Looking further ahead, our ultimate goal is to predict the potential for accidents and so ensure that they don’t happen. This is not science fiction. The growing data in GADM is one of the building blocks. Each new data contribution and every improvement in our analytical capabilities moves this closer to reality.”
During a press conference after his speech, journalists grilled him further on the plight of MH370.
“I have no idea what happened to that aircraft. To be honest, I don’t think anyone else has either,” Tyler said, rejecting speculations about the missing plane.
Tyler said what airlines can do is work on preventing another aircraft from vanishing with better tracking because aircraft “simply cannot disappear like this again.”
Discussions about real-time tracking and airline safety feature in many sessions of the IATA meeting.
The industry is looking at ways to continuously track aircraft in ways that do not require a constant stream of data, which may not be manageable for tens of thousands of planes each day.
“We need to take a global mindset to problems like this because we don’t want to be in a position where one government or regulatory body requires us to do it one way in one place and we have to do it a different way in a different place,” Tyler said.
“Today, aviation is the life blood of the global economy. The industry supports more than 58 million jobs and $ 4.2 trillion in economic activity,” he said.
“The good news is that airline profits are improving. The average return on invested capital today is 5.4 percent — up from 1.4 percent in 2008. But we are still far from earning the 7 percent to 8 percent cost of capital that investors would expect,” said Tyler.