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Leonardo Times JUNE 2013T
he world of aviation has always been aware of the risks involved, yet it has always been encouraging curiosity, look-ing for innovation and pursulook-ing its chal-lenges to fl y even safer. With safety as trademark and top priority, the SAFE Sym-posium hosted discussions on the latest developments in the world of aviation with respect to safety.The day was fi lled with lectures from an internationally respected ensemble of guests, all linked to the general theme of safeguarding aviation in the future ef-fectively. Fred Abbink, former Technical Director of the National Aerospace Labo-ratory guided the audience through three sections of the day: Material and Mainte-nance, Air Traffi c Management, and Flight Control. The day was concluded by an in-teractive debate led by Pablo Mendes de Leon.
MATERIAL AND MAINTENANCE Discussing safety in the future of aviation is impossible without a thorough under-standing of materials and maintenance. Is it possible to have large-scale innova-tion, with full composite aircraft whilst
at the same time guaranteeing or even improving the overall safety of aviation? What impact does a radical change in the use of materials or systems have, es-pecially for the maintenance personnel? Jan Verbeek, Partner & Senior Consultant of ADSE enriched us with a deeper under-standing of this subject. He explained this subject with examples taken straight from the fi eld and gave the attendees a clear insight in the practical issues that arise when implementing innovation. The title of his presentation “Innovation and Safety – a contradiction or two sides of the same coin?” was the perfect opener of the SAFE Symposium. His striking conclusion was that they are in fact part of “the same coin” and should be treated integrally rather than in competition. Furthermore the in-novation of the complete certifi cation process needs more attention to guaran-tee a successful deployment of the fi nal product.
Steven Soederhuizen, Vice President Op-erations & Supply Chain of Fokker Aero-structures taught us that despite what most of the audience thought, Fokker is not only still alive but is alive and kicking.
Still over 500 Fokker aircraft are operated today and amongst many others, Fokker plays an important role in the construc-tion of most business jets tails and the Glare panels of the A380. The type of business Fokker is delivering to the world even deserved its very own verb: Aircraft-ING. The presentation was concluded with a direct call on the audience to join the Dutch aerospace industry.
AIR TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
The next challenge is to successfully han-dle all aircraft in the air. Ideally airplanes should be able to fl y direct routes be-tween destinations to minimise fuel burn and, thereby, the impact on the environ-ment. Originally scheduled guest speaker Günther Matschnigg, Senior Vice Presi-dent of IATA sadly fell ill just before the symposium and we were very fortunate that Giancarlo Buono, Assistance Direc-tor of Safety and Operations Europe from IATA was able to replace him so fast and so well. With traffi c growth outgrowing capacity it is IATA’s vision to promote cost-eff ective solutions that ensure the safety, capacity and effi ciency of air travel. IATA
This year the Aviation Department had the honour of organising the annual symposium of the VSV ‘Leonardo
da Vinci’ on the occasion of its 20
thanniversary. On March 5, 2013 approximately 250 students and aviation
professionals gathered in the Auditorium of Delft University of Technology to enjoy a day fi lled with inspirational
lectures and educative discussions to gain a deeper understanding in the role that safety plays in the world of
aviation.
TEXT Bob Winters, BSc. Student Aerospace Engineering, Symposium Aff airs of the 20th Aviation Department
Safeguarding Aviation in the Future Eff ectively
SAFE SYMPOSIUM
LVD
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promotes PBN (Performance-Based Navi-gation), something that has been spoken about for forty years already, but the reali-sation is only just occurring. PBN requires a transition from conventional navigation to area navigation.
One of the bodies responsible for air traf-fi c management in Europe is EUROCON-TROL. Tony Licu, Head Safety Unit at EU-ROCONTROL acknowledges all that was said before by Giancarlo Buono from IATA but with the subtitle: ”What do you need to know about future Risk and Safety Man-agement and what you have not learnt in school.’’ He taught the audience how the industry should improve safety even more. Rather than focus on what goes wrong, focus on what goes right. After all, something that went wrong was sup-posed to happen correctly. It is therefore the trick to spot the things that gave the correct outcome, but in which the system might not function smoothly. Following Tony Licu was Jacco Hoekstra, the former dean of the Faculty of Aerospace Engi-neering of Delft University of Technology. His approach to a safer and more eff ective air traffi c management arose from a re-search project in cooperation with NASA, FAA and the NLR. This project named Free Flight is based on the assumption that air-planes have a 100% Airborne Separation Assurance and thus no Air Traffi c Control
is needed for separation. This project strik-ingly concluded that with a relatively sim-ple algorithm for separation Free Flight has the potential of increasing safety, ca-pacity and effi ciency. This out of the box project was a real eye-opener for the audi-ence as it showed that potential solutions for the current problems exist but are not yet fully exploited.
FLIGHT CONTROL
After lunch it was the role of Harry Nelson, Executive Operational Advisor to Product Safety and Former Experimental Test Pilot of Airbus, to focus more on the human (er-ror) side of fl ight control. He gave the au-dience an overview on the improvement the aviation industry has made with re-spect to safety. Drawing on this own expe-rience as a (test) pilot, he provided real-life examples on how several safety systems as we know them today, over time, came into existence and the respective philoso-phies behind the systems; it was truly an inspirational lecture.
Joram Verstraeten from the NLR ended the lecturing part of the symposium with a clear overview on the develop-ment of Unmanned Aerial Systems. Joram Verstraeten investigated the question whether people should step aboard an unpiloted fl ight. It can be answered with the formulation that as long as the system
is not outperforming the human on all fronts, we need humans to fl y the aero-plane. Or would you already step aboard on what may be everyone’s future? INTERACTIVE DEBATE
Concluding a day of interesting lectures it was time for the speakers and the au-dience to start debating. The auau-dience was able to interact with the panel and moderator with help of a Twitter Wall. Pablo Mendes de Leon, Director of the In-ternational Institute of Air and Space Law from the University of Leiden, hosted the debate. He proved to be the perfect neu-tral balancing factor with an outstanding knowledge on the subject to get the best out of each panel member respectively. It was the perfect opportunity for the audi-ence to ask all remaining questions and start discussing on the lessons learned from the day. It is safe to say that ‘SAFE’ en-riched the audience with the understand-ing of the role that safety plays in aviation and was received with great enthusiasm over the day.
Special thanks go out to the speakers, Committee of Recommendation, spon-sors and volunteers for their contribution to the SAFE Symposium.
For further information visit www.safesym-posium.com
`` Aviation Department
The Aviation Department (LVD) of the So-ciety of Aerospace Engineering Students ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ fulfi lls the needs of aviation
enthou-siasts by organ-ising activities, like lectures and excursions in the Netherlands and abroad. Figure 1. Jacco Hoekstra presents the Free Flight Project
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