EASA Annual Safety Conference 2023

Leveraging disruptive technologies for safe, sustainable air travel: from Seville to Sumatra

Aviation is on a dynamic recovery path in 2023 as business and leisure travel is rapidly recovering compared to the previous pandemic years. Despite challenges due to war and high fuel prices, aviation has shown an extremely high resilience and air connectivity is approaching pre-pandemic levels in most markets. The recovery shows that European citizens highly value the possibility to meet family and friends in person and visit known and new destinations as travel agencies report high demand for the 2023 summer season.

The recovery of aviation comes at a time when an unprecedented boost of innovation is seen in the sector and virtually in all other parts of the economy and the wider society. 2023 has seen technological innovation towards zero emissions technologies such as new propulsion systems based on battery-electric, hybrid-electric as well as hydrogen technologies. To boost the transition towards the Green Deal targets and the path to Net Zero, the EU has introduced regulatory innovations by adopting a mandate for Sustainable Aviation Fuels and an EU environmental labelling scheme to allow passengers making informed choices based on EASA-verified CO2 declarations.

Beyond aviation, innovation in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are being deployed rapidly and fundamental debates are ongoing as to on how the new technologies can be used and governed to the benefit and protection of citizens and the natural environment.

The 2023 edition of the EASA Annual Safety Conference will look at the most important hotspots of innovation and discuss the key safety challenges. How do we make sure that aviation remains the safest way to travel and at the same time accelerate aviation’s path to NetZero?.

In doing so the conference programme is structured to follows a zero emissions door-to-door trip in the year 2040 from Seville to Sumatra in Indonesia, via Singapore, using regional and long-distance aeroplanes as well as an air taxi.

The ASC 2023 is jointly organised by EASA and the Spanish State Aviation Safety Agency (AESA). The conference is being arranged in the context of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU.