KUALA LUMPUR: The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has urged aviation stakeholders to follow global standards and make greater use of operational data in order to safely accommodate an additional 3.8 billion air travellers by 2036.
IATA director-general and chief executive officer Alexandre de Juniac said in the next 20 years, passengers are expected to almost double from four billion in 2017.
“Managing this growth, while making aviation even safer than it already is, will be a massive undertaking,” he said in a statement.
De Juniac said global standards and best practices were vital to sustaining safety improvements as demonstrated by the performance of airlines on the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) registry.
“Now in its 15th year, IOSA is the recognised global standard for operational safety. Over the last five years, the accident rate for airlines on the IOSA registry has been nearly three times better than for non-IOSA airlines,” he said.
He said IOSA was also undergoing digital transformation to enable more seamless interaction with industry safety initiatives, standards, and operational practices, as well as benchmarking.
On the greater use of operational data, de Juniac said IATA’s Global Aviation Data Management (GADM) programme has now included information from over 470 different organisations.
“Over 90 per cent of IATA members are contributing to at least one of the GADM databases,” he said.
Besides that, de Juniac said IATA is also developing a global database of turbulence reports to provide airlines with an enhanced situational awareness tool.
“When our innovative turbulence data repository is operational early next year, we expect to see a significant decrease in turbulence-related injuries,” he added. — Bernama