Help shape the future of ground handling safety standards in Europe by taking part in our Ground Safety Industry Summit.

The Summit will take place at 1100-1245 on 16 February as part of GHI’s 9th Safety Conference and unite airlines with ground handlers and GSE manufacturers to explore immediate opportunities to improve the safety of our employees and aircraft while they are on the ground.

GHI will be submitting the recommendations of the Summit to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for inclusion in its ground handling roadmap and support EASA in developing a European approach to ensure safety in ground handling.

The Summit will be held in a spirit of collaboration and best practice-sharing between aviation stakeholders united by a common desire to ensure every flight attendant, ramp operative or team leader returns home safe from their shift and we avoid preventable aircraft damage incidents.

Ground Safety Industry Summit: discussion areas

• Establishing common ground safety regulations and standards: what are the essential elements of ground safety standards? How do we define key performance indicators, harmonise diverse ground handling activities and oversee implementation?
• Human Factors: exploring how we better engage and train our employees to proactively address and remove safety risks during turnaround, pushback and towing.  
• Safety vs OTP:  how do ensure the quest for a faster turnaround never leads to shortcuts on safety or brings airline and ground employees into conflict?     
• GSE, automation and new tech: investigating how advances in GSE like driverless technologies and live data capture during turnaround could be used to eliminate common accident occurrences.    
• Skills Shortages: nearly 80% of European operators said a skills shortage at their station had been complicit in an accident or near miss in a recent GHI survey. How do we address our attrition problem?
• Stakeholder collaboration and best practice sharing: should the lessons from ground safety accident investigations be disseminated to all stakeholders in the same way air accident investigations are conducted? How do we leave businesses rivalries aside and make ground safety a cross-party goal?

Have your say email  Max Gosney