The 24th annual edition of EASS (European Aviation Safety Seminar) is fast approaching and will be held between February 29th and March 1st this year in Dublin. While many people see Dublin as a great place to watch rugby and drink a certain, famous stout (myself included), this seminar most definitely has a serious side to it. EASS is held annually at various locations throughout Europe and focusses on safety challenges of note to the European aviation industry.

This year, the focus is going to be split into three main areas which are current issues, training issues and operational landing issues. Current issues will be looking into a review of last year, EASA’s Automation Policy and the European Advisory Committee Go-Around Project while training issues will be focussing on compliance and perceptions of training to name a few. Finally, the section on operational landing issues will be looking into over-runs and current best practice for idle versus full reverse thrust landings as there needs to be a balance found among safety, economics and noise.

Being a software provider within the aviation industry, this is of course extremely important to Gael as we have a part to play in helping operators/airports/regulators etc manage all of the associated data. By helping these organisations manage and analyse all of this data, we are of course playing our part in the extremely complex world of aviation safety and if, by using our software, operators etc can better manage safety and risk, then we have achieved our goal of helping make aviation a much safer place.

Another aspect of Q-Pulse within aviation safety that we are trying to bring to the fore is FDM integration. FDM (Flight Data Monitoring) is an extremely complex area that people spend years trying to master. Due to our current partnerships with Sagem, FDS and Aerobytes, operators are able to effectively ‘plug in’ and integrate their FDM systems to Q-Pulse, thereby letting Q-Pulse do a lot of the work for them by analysing and recording the data, thus helping improve safety. Incidents, for example, can then be managed by FDM analysts and root causes identified, speeding up the process of identification and rectification of errors.

We'll also be demonstrating our latest iPad applications, Q-Pulse Docs and Q-Pulse Audit (Find out more about each by clicking on the links).

I’m sure we will all learn a lot from the seminar and on a less serious note, I look forward to sinking a few pints of ‘the black stuff’ and enjoying the craic in the great city of Dublin - if you want to join us, let us know.