Safety under "crucial" focus at Jordan summit

A meeting, described at crucial to the development of aviation safety was held in Amman today.

The 5th top level safety team (TLST) meeting, organised by the Middle East Aviation Safety Roadmap (MEASRM), brought together senior aviation officials from local, regional and international aviation authorities, air carriers and supporting organisations.

The event was hosted by Royal Jordanian Airlines whose chief executive Hussein Dabbas who said that the meeting was crucial for addressing safety concerns and to generate safety initiatives. “The team has proved adept at offering useful advice to airlines and aviation authorities, and to improving safety in the region,” Dabbas said

Talking about his own airline, Dabbas announced that RJ had successfully met the requirements needed to become an European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) member and implementer, and renewed the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) and the IATA Safety Audit for Ground Operations (ISAGO) accreditations without a hitch.

Director General of the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority Saif Al Suwaidi, who chaired the meeting, said: “The co-operation between the aviation industry partners and the governments is the key factor to obtain best results, therefore all stakeholders should commit resources in order to achieve good results in meeting our objectives and targets.”

Suwaidi said that in many cases, individual countries do not possess the resources or the expertise to act alone in resolving safety concerns making MEASRM best suited to coordinate and align multiple safety initiatives by strategically leveraging expertise and resources of the concerned countries.

Chief Commissioner/CEO of Jordanian Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission Captain Mohammad Amin Al-Quran said that the Middle East Aviation Safety Roadmap confirms the importance and necessity for meaningful partnerships between the regulators, industry partners, and regional and international aviation organizations. He pointed out that the aviation industry in the Middle East region is growing at unprecedented level, thus requiring collective and structured efforts amongst all parties in the aviation sector to find solutions to the various new and emerging challenges in civil aviation.