Nov 23 – RAF Gibraltar Wins European Aviation Safety Award
RAF Gibraltar have won an award recognizing their performance in the field of aviation safety at a recent European Aviation Safety Awards Ceremony held in London.
The 2015 Performance in Aviation Safety Awards are European-wide and designed to support the Baines Simmons 4th European Aviation Safety Symposium. This year they aimed to showcases the importance of moving beyond compliance to safety performance by illustrating practical examples of safety implementation and improvement from across the aviation industry.
RAF Gibraltar won the Special Category prize for ‘Active Leadership’. There are five awards presented at the ceremony, one overall ‘Performance in Aviation’ award and four Special Category winners; Active Leadership, Human Factors & Error Management, Proactive Culture and Supportive Capability.
They were shortlisted to 11 finalists from a variety of high calibre nominations throughout the civil and military field of aviation. The overall winner for ‘Performance in Aviation Safety’ went to KLM UK Engineering with RAF Marham, London City Airport and Quantas Engineering Australia winning category awards.
Former Station Commander, Wing Commander Greg ‘Vasco’ Smith and Air Safety Manager, Flight Lieutenant (Flt Lt) Avril Webb attended the Awards Ceremony on behalf of RAF Gibraltar. They were delighted to discover RAF Gibraltar had won the ‘Active Leadership’ award, Flt Lt Webb said:
“It was a very proud moment for us and although we were there in person to accept the award, air safety is very much a team effort at RAF Gibraltar and my favourite quote that sums this up is ‘Behind every success story there is a supporting cast’. We were especially pleased that the judges recognised that we haven’t had any additional resources in order to implement some of our new initiatives, we have been able to do this through changing hearts and minds, which is the key piece.”
Since her arrival in Gibraltar Flt Lt Webb has reinvigorated air safety across British Forces Gibraltar with the implementation of annual Air Safety Training for all personnel within the Command and the introduction of the RAF Gibraltar Air Safety Awards. These initiatives have helped to spread the key message of air safety throughout the community.
Raising awareness of Foreign Object Debris (FOD) is paramount to air safety and something that everyone can help with, Flt Lt Webb explains:
“We have a very unusual set up at the airfield, in that we have a road crossing the runway. There are around 12,000 pedestrian and vehicle crossings a day which can naturally lead to a higher risk of FOD, this can be a real hazard. The whole community can help by making sure the areas surrounding the airfield are clean and tidy at all times to limit the amount of litter blowing onto the airfield. If anyone does spot something in areas surrounding the airfield that could be a potential hazard they can contact the air traffic control switchboard on 2005 3383.
Pics: Top left and below: Flight Lieutenant Webb with Wing Commander Smith. Middle: The Award, Bottom: The finalists.
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