On a rainy November morning in a large Fairmount Hotel Vancouver ballroom, CHC Helicopters vice president of safety, compliance, and flight standards Jon Hopkinson set the stage for the three-day CHC Safety and Quality Summit.
On large screens behind him, a loop video of waves rolling toward shore played as he broke down the summit’s theme, Accelerate 2025: Building Safety Momentum.
“I’d like us to pause and consider what we really mean by momentum,” Hopkinson told the more than 350 aviation industry professionals from around the world in attendance.
“The wave behind me rises and falls again and again. This is momentum pushes and pulls obstacles in its path. A wave carries momentum because it transfers energy as it travels. But did you know that some waves lack momentum? Momentum, energy, and movement are distinct concepts. Movement is a state of doing something. Momentum is moving things in a desired direction.”
Using examples from Space X, Nottingham Forest Football Club manager Brian Clough, and Boeing, he emphasized how safety is a team effort where everyone has a part to play to maintain safety momentum. Highlighting Boeing, he warned: “Without momentum, we fall backwards.”
“Who is responsible for building and maintaining that momentum?” he asked. “It’s up to all of us to be leaders. Let’s all challenge ourselves. How will you lead with safety momentum? How will you continuously inspire everyone in your organization to be safety leaders? Every safe flight completed generates momentum and those are not due to an individual leader, but leadership by every player involved – pilots, operations, maintenance, and support services.
“In a period of pressure and headwinds that threaten to slow progress, take comfort in the small victories. Every mission we fly safely is a victory. Every time a team member pauses a mission with a flight safety concern is a victory, too. As we discuss ways to create opportunities to improve safety efficiency reliably, let’s also think how we can support and encourage safety leadership in all our team members, regardless of their role. We may be surprised at just how quickly we can generate and accelerate safety momentum when we really get going.”
For three days, attendees immersed themselves in the topic of safety momentum through three general sessions and by choosing from 23 engaging and often interactive safety-focused workshops led by subject matter experts and thought leaders.
Several workshops addressed artificial intelligence (AI), exploring how it can help increase safety, how to ensure it is safely integrated into a company, and how to identify and mitigate risks of AI collaboration.
While AI can help quickly gather and analyze data, helping companies identify opportunities for increased safety, welcoming AI into the company can pose organizational risks.
For instance, Global Effective Solutions executive director Eric Greenwood’s “Managing Risks of AI Collaboration to Energize Safety Cultures” workshop explained how AI inputs can become publicly available if users don’t undertake proper measures.
Do your employees know what they shouldn’t give to ChatGPT to help them organize data? Do you have a company safety rule about using AI?
Another workshop on AI-powered safety management systems highlighted how the technology can dramatically enhance data analysis, risk assessment, and reporting.
The concept of safety culture and just culture were also topics of several workshops.
Aviation psychologist Paul Dickens explored the psychology of trust – what it means, how it is built, its part in just culture, and how it must be fostered. CAE instructor Eric Almond discussed the decline of available personnel and how to attract, mentor, and empower a new generation with the importance of just culture.
The summit offered a wide variety of human factors and decision-making courses, from exploring the effect of the fight or flight response in accidents and enhanced cognitive reasoning.
Archetypal founder Kenneth Wylie, himself an avalanche victim in a scenario he could have avoided, explored aspirational human values and human failings through reviewing the go/no-go conference call the night before the Space Shuttle Challenger launched.
The father of the Dirty Dozen in 1993, Gordon Dupont, joined ACE Consulting’s Willis Jacobs to explore the 12 highest human factors risks that remain as relevant today as they did 30 years ago with one key shift – a more realistic focus on mitigation as opposed to elimination.
Other popular workshops explored whether audits are still the best approach to operational safety, how to safeguard safety management systems and safety culture from leadership changes (which offered insight for new leaders as well as established teams), overcoming ignorance to maintain continuous safety improvement, transforming safety training to increase engagement, safety’s role in the survival of the business, and the impact of cannabinoids on aviation.
The successful event achieved its primary directive – to get industry professionals learning, talking, and collaborating.
Attendees packed the dining hall for breakfast and lunch, with people from multiple companies and countries talking at individual tables. In between, attendees were given ample time to connect and collaborate, and many engaged in animated discussions about what they were learning.
“We’ve received very positive feedback from attendees, which I think is illustrated by the companies that bring their people to the summit every year,” explained CHC Helicopters CEO Tom Burke during the show.
“We have tried to incorporate a range of workshops from highly technical topics like the physics behind unintentional yaw to human factors and human behavior topics that engage the newer generation as well as seasoned professionals since we have everyone here from students to CEOs. I feel we achieved what we aimed to do – help increase safety in our industry. I hope people feel armed to take what they’ve learned home and integrate it into their operations.”
