Bombardier Safety Standdown: Prepping For Business Aviation Operations

WICHITA—Bombardier kicked off the 2023 Safety Standdown event, called “Integrity in Safety,” by hosting more than 400 aviation professionals from across the industry to the free event in Wichita with hundreds more online to discuss the best practices for safety in business aviation.

“Integrity implies trustworthiness and incorruptibility,” Ed Bolen, president and CEO of the National Business Aviation Association, said in an address to those gathered. “What could corrupt us in our effort to be safe? Maybe fatigue. Maybe distraction. Maybe confusion. Maybe pressure. Maybe addiction. There are a lot of chances to be productive in our pledge and in our trust, in our responsibility towards safety .... Without safety, our industry is not moving forward. We operate on trust—trust from the public; trust from the company; trust from ourselves and our family. That when we fly, we will be safe. It’s a core commitment.”

In a workshop during the event, Adam Hartley, an operations manager for Universal Weather and Aviation, gave a presentation on how to increase mission feasibility in business aviation operations.

“As the complexity rises, the expectations are also rising, and that’s really putting a crunch on the people of business aviation,” Hartley says.

Throughout the presentation, Hartley posed several questions that operators find themselves asking when attempting to create a workplace environment that prioritizes safety and efficiency.

“There is certainly not very much downtime to go around in business aviation these days, but what I mean by that is when you’re not hyper-focused on a specific thing, when you’re not hyper-focused on a specific location, locations or the mission itself, what can you be doing to make things better for you?” he asked. “Where are you getting your data from? What are those partnerships? How are you doing it on a recurrent basis?”

According to Hartley, an often-overlooked method of ensuring a successful mission starts with personal professional development.

“Leaning into some of those rooms, committees, networks, associations, to give myself broader context really changed how effective I was for my organization,” he says.

As part of that broader context, Hartley stressed how that expanded professional network improves results in the workplace.

“The next generation does not want to work five years to get the experience. That is not in their plan,” he says. “So, if you can give them diversity in thought, diversity in information, diversity in resources—the earlier you can give them those things, the more you give them access to those other resources, it’s going to pay off in spades.”