by the Air Taxi Safety Campaign Team, Transport Canada, Civil Aviation
With a summer of nice weather and a greater sense of adventure behind us, we anticipate air traffic volume to continue to grow alongside people’s desire to get mobile in ways they weren’t able to during the pandemic. With that desire and an expected increase in the volume of air traffic within the 703-air taxi sector, we’d like to draw your attention to some important safety information. In one of its latest reports on the air-taxi sector, the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) identified more accidents and fatalities than in all other sectors of commercial aviation in Canada. As you may know, air-taxi services operate in a very different context than other sectors of aviation; air-taxi operations often have no set schedule and fly into remote areas in uncontrolled airspace with few airports or navigation aids. Given this movement of adventure and excitement within the country with fewer restrictions, Transport Canada Civil Aviation (TCCA) is taking this timely opportunity to highlight its air taxi aviation safety campaign.
The aim of this campaign is to directly address TSB’s recommendation A19-02 from the TSB report A15H0001, which is to “collaborate with industry associations to develop strategies, education products, and tools to help air-taxi operators and their clients eliminate the acceptance of unsafe practices.” Success in doing so is predicated on voluntary compliance through safety promotion and awareness, which TCCA is ready to undertake to positively influence safety within the sector and to reduce the risks in the air-taxi sector over the course of the next three years.
This integrated multi-year approach focuses on:
- Focus group development and facilitation;
- Facilitation of subsequent working groups;
- Statistics-gathering to support campaign objectives and effectiveness;
- Facilitation of seminars and participation in association events; and
- Developing safety promotion and education publications, as well as tools that support the elimination of unsafe practices in the air taxi sector.
The groundwork has been laid in the first phase of this multi-year approach. The framework, vision and documentation were developed and in phase two, TCCA is focusing on risk categorization within the air-taxi sector, identifying stakeholder groups to participate in the campaign, establishing regular recurring focus groups to broaden best practices discussions, promoting the campaign through media outreach, obtaining industry feedback through an Air Taxi Maintenance Safety Survey, developing safety seminars, and conducting air taxi targeted inspections. The two subsequent phases, four and five, are aimed at refining and strengthening the work completed throughout phase three.
We encourage you to take a moment to familiarize yourself with this campaign as we invite you to participate and share your input and expertise with us and others across the industry. You can find more information on the Air Taxi Safety Campaign web page. You can also provide your input, feedback, and expertise by contacting us at: airtaxi-taxiaerien@tc.gc.ca.
We’d also like to share a few words with you from Nicholas Robinson, Director General, TCCA:
“There really couldn’t be a better time for us to broadly share the work we’ve undertaken to further aviation safety in Canada, especially in a sector that is as unique and more fluid than other areas of the aviation industry. Over the last couple of years, we’ve really been able to take a step back to strategize and inform ourselves on how to dial this campaign into what it needs to be to take us forward. Not only did this period afford us the time to do that, but it also afforded us the opportunity to deepen the approach of how we are addressing the TSB’s concerns and recommendations within the air taxi sector. We look forward to working together, as your expertise, commitment and action are the most critical parts of this campaign.”
This fall, you will start to see more inspectors reaching out to gain insight and input from you. You will also start to see more promotional products, messages, and forums to participate in. We know that you take the recommendations of the TSB as seriously as we do, and we look forward to collaborating with you over the coming months.