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Countering threats to safe flying in a fragmented world
August 1st 2025
Airline managements know there is one irrefutable rule of the aviation industry - that no one knows when the next crisis will erupt only that it will turn up. In the meantime, our industry must continue to counter multitudes of threats to safe flying that are not of their making. Read More »
Delegates at the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) Air Safety Seminar (APASS) in Manila mid-month heard existing and emerging risks include the potential for cyber-attacks and the impact of global warming that is increasing more frequent severe weather events.
Already here, and in the headlines, are the daily challenges flight operations teams and cockpit crew face in ensuring their routings to destinations across the world avoid conflict zones. Airlines and their crews are flying longer routes to avoid the airspaces of the Middle East, Russia/Ukraine and more recently India/Pakistan. All these conflicts are globally recognised threats to safe flying and not so well known to the general public.
All too familiar to airlines are other bad actors: North Korea’s propensity to test fire missiles across international air routes without warning. Or as happened earlier this year, Chinese naval vessels conducting a live fire exercise in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand without any pre-warning. Some 49 commercial aircraft had to be diverted from their pre-planned routes as a result of the exercise.
Also of serious concern to airlines is spoofing, or jamming of critical GPS navigation systems. The International Air Transport Association’s Global Aviation Data Management Flight Data eXchange has reported GPS signal loss events increased 220% between 2021 and 2024.
With continuing geopolitical tensions, it is difficult to believe this trend will reverse in the near-term. While these events are not exclusively the result of military activities - a handheld GPS jammer can be bought online for $20 - in conflict zones and elsewhere, it is clear the majority certainly are.
At APASS, delegates from airlines, airline bodies, regulators, aviation industry manufacturers and security engaged in penetrating and complicated discussions about these threats to safe flying.
They also detailed myriad other factors that impact cabin safety: crew fatigue when diverted routes add hours to flights, turbulence, engineering and maintenance competence and turboprop and regional jet safety. The key takeout from the discussions at the two-day conference was aviation in its entirety must co-operate and co-ordinate efforts to find solutions to the latest threats to safe flying.No sector silos are to be allowed in neutralising the latest onslaught of threats.
The AAPA is to be congratulated on organizing such a significant air safety event. It brought together more than 300 delegates from 35 airlines, aviation regulators and key safety partners from across the region and beyond.
We should have more of them.
TOM BALLANTYNE
Associate editor and chief correspondent
Orient Aviation Media Group
