Montréal, 30 November 2017 – With runway safety and in particular runway excursions and incursions remaining among civil aviation’s top safety risk categories, ICAO and its global runway safety partnering organizations met in Lima, Peru this week to agree on a new Global Runway Safety Action Plan.
Commenting on the 2017 ICAO Global Runway Safety Symposium, ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu stressed that “Runway safety has been a global aviation priority for more than 15 years, and this new action plan is an important outcome of the detailed analysis of runway risk factors recently undertaken by ICAO.”
Runway accident related fatalities have declined significantly in recent years through the work of ICAO’s collaborative Runway Safety Programme and stakeholders’ efforts such as the establishment of Runway Safety Teams at airports. Nevertheless, runway accidents remain aviation’s number one safety risk category.
The new Action Plan agreed to at the ICAO Symposium will serve to guide the integrated activities of States, airports, airlines, ANSPs and manufacturers to implement runway safety improvement and risk reduction measures, with an overall objective of reducing runway safety related accident fatalities and costs.
“Regardless of the success achieved thus far, the numbers still reveal for us that we have more work to do to fully mitigate runway-related risks,” Dr. Liu emphasized. “That helps explain why ICAO has brought the world’s runway safety specialists here to Lima this week for our second Global Runway Safety Symposium, and we’re encouraged by the outcome of this new Action Plan which will drive improved runway safety risk mitigation over the next five years.”
The Action Plan targets and timelines have been developed to support the runway safety targets already established under ICAO’s Global Aviation Safety Plan, which is looked to by aviation safety specialists all over the world as a high-level strategic tool to help align international actions and initiatives and avoid duplication of efforts.
An additional and related development announced at the Lima Symposium included EUROCONTROL’s launch of its revised European Action Plan for the Prevention of Runway Incursions.
The 2017 ICAO Global Runway Safety Symposium was hosted by the Ministry of Transport and Communications, and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation of Peru. It enjoyed the participation of global runway safety experts from Member States and many international organizations and industry groups.
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About ICAO
A specialized agency of the United Nations, ICAO was created in 1944 to promote the safe and orderly development of international civil aviation throughout the world. It sets standards and regulations necessary for aviation safety, security, efficiency, capacity and environmental protection, amongst many other priorities. The Organization serves as the forum for cooperation in all fields of civil aviation among its 192 Member States.
ICAO’s Collaborative Runway Safety Programme
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