I remember as a military pilot some years ago, being shown a safety education film. It followed the events leading up to the crash of a military aircraft where the pilot could not eject before impact and both his life and the aircraft were lost. There were many reasons for the crash (as is usual) and their relationships were complex, but the point of the film was to emphasise that everyone who had interacted with that pilot before his flight contributed in a large or small way to the tragedy.

In civil aviation, the Pilot in Command has the ultimate responsibility for the safe operation of the aircraft and we shoulder this responsibility as a profession. However, the flight crew cannot achieve all that is necessary alone; they need in order to effectively carry out this duty:

• a good legislative framework, that protects the role of the captain as a safety agent, and provides good safety standards and good reporting systems in a just culture environment
• the operators to respect the independence of the pilot to take safety motivated decisions
• other employee groups to professionally delivering their own safety responsibilities
• and even the passengers to raise their safety awareness

It is common to see the statement that safety is everyone's responsibility. But just how seriously that concept matches reality will come under scrutiny, if the new safety programmes currently under development at ICAO are adopted.

In the past, the main 'driver' to improve safety levels has been the accident reports which have painstakingly sought to reconstruct events leading up to the tragedy. This process, along with the efforts of many hardworking professionals, has made civil aviation one of the safest ways to travel. However, that job is never complete, and there is a widespread view that we must continue to aggressively decrease the rate of aircraft accidents, in order to continue to reduce the number of accidents, given projected industry growth. No fatal accident can ever be viewed as 'acceptable'.

A working group at ICAO, which includes representatives of our partner organisation IFALPA, is proposing that the amount of data collected through aircraft accidents is thankfully too small to continue to make meaningful improvements. The next step must be taken, which is to design safety into every level of every organisation, in order to learn from the factors which add together to make an accident.

This starts with the regulator, and ECA has been urging the European Commission to embrace its role as the senior regulator. Once the Commission has accepted its leading position, then each European Agency and National Regulator is able to adopt their responsibilities, leading the whole industry to value the benefits of a 'just culture' for reporting, where the reporter is rewarded for their honesty and there is no threat of punishment or victimisation.

So - who is responsible for flight safety? Everyone is, from Commission President Barrosso, and Commissioner for Transport Barrot, right down through the agencies and regulators, the airline managements and employees, the passengers; everyone. It is only with a steady stream of small 'incidents' reported and analysed; trends detected and acted upon, can we hope to create an environment where a coincidence of small failures cannot conspire to cause any more tragedies.