ICAO’s first Safety and Air Navigation Implementation Symposium

Dr Fang Liu, Secretary General of ICAO, provides the opening remarks to the UN aviation agency’s Safety and Air Navigation Implementation Symposium (SANIS/1), held in mid-December at ICAO HQ in Montréal, Canada.

SANIS/1 followed ICAO’s second Global Air Navigation Industry Symposium (GANIS/2) held in week commencing 10 December, where State and industry experts reviewed proposals for how to integrate the future air navigation system to accommodate global aviation’s forecast doubling of flights and passengers in 15 years’ time.

Dr Liu highlighted to her audience that the safety, capacity and efficiency of the world’s aviation network is presently threatened by the speed at which it is expanding. She elaborated that sectoral growth cannot be permitted to negatively impact the key strategic performance targets, and existing levels of aviation safety, efficiency, and environmental protection should continue to trend upward even as operations expand.