European Plan for Aviation Safety 2023 to 2025
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With the 12th edition, EASA decided to shorten the EPAS reference period to 3 years in order to ensure more focussed and more stable strategic priorities. With the support of its Advisory Bodies EASA undertook a comprehensive review of the strategic priorities in Volume I against the new operational context, resulting in stronger focus on the management of risk interdependencies, as well as on the competences of personnel (in particular through the implementation of competency-based training and assessment across all aviation domains), and an extension of the operational safety priorities. Additional priorities for the safe integration of emerging technologies and new business concepts are also included. EPAS also continues to maintain the strategic priorities for environmental protection to support the implementation of the European Green Deal with the ambitious goal for the EU to be climate neutral by 2050.
Following completion in 2022 of 16 actions to mitigate the main risks identified in the previous EPAS editions,the EPAS Volume II 2023 edition now includes 158 actions, of which 13 are new. The description of rulemaking tasks (RMT) now provides more details on the working method and related ICAO reference documents, among other new features, in line with the revised Rulemaking Procedure that was adopted by the EASA Management Board in May 2022 (MB Decision No 01-2022). To simplify the EPAS and to provide better visibility on the active actions, regular update rulemaking tasks without active cycle are removed from the main part of Volume II.
Volume III ‘Safety Risk Portfolios’ presents the available domain risk portfolios established through the European Safety Risk Management process. A new ‘Systemic and conjunctural’ safety risk portfolio is included, drawing together COVID-19 safety issues and those stemming from the war in Ukraine. A list of higher risk safety issues across domains is provided for the first time. Development of an airworthiness safety risk portfolio is in progress to address safety issues related to airworthiness and environmental certification. It will be published as part of the EPAS Volume III 2024 edition.
While strategic priorities are set for the entire reference period (2023-2025), EPAS Volume II ‘Actions’ and Volume III ‘Safety Risk Portfolios’ will continue to be reviewed and updated annually.
