Key takeaways from the Safety Forum 2025

Written by Consultant Liam Bell

Let me get a show of hands:

• How many of you have ever had a broken leg?
• How about high blood pressure?
• Have you ever suffered from a panic attack or depression?
• How about a headache or migraine?

Those questions were asked to a forum of around 150 aviation safety and human factors professionals at this year’s Safety Forum. Three out of the four questions were answered confidently by the crowd. One of them was met with hesitation, a slight intake of breath, a sinking further back into the seat.

Evidently, admitting in the company of peers that you’ve had a broken leg or high blood pressure is easy, but raising your hand in the same room full of peers when asked if you’ve ever experienced a mental health issue? Considerably more difficult.

The stigma surrounding mental health is still very much present. Improved, yes. But there’s still work to do. This year’s theme of the Flight Safety Foundation’s Safety Forum was “putting people at the centre of aviation safety” with a primary focus on mental health and wellbeing. As ever, there were lots of takeaways, my top three listed below.

Importance of recognising minor incidents related to mental health, not just major ones 

Following the tragic incident of Germanwings Flight 9525 in 2015, all commercial air operators in the EU are now required by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to implement support programmes for flight crew, which include peer support elements. 

Heinrich’s Law highlights the importance of paying attention to the smaller, underlying factors that can lead to significant incidents. Many years later, the late, great James Reason devised the Swiss cheese model – visualising a system’s defences as slices of Swiss cheese, each of them with holes representing weaknesses or vulnerabilities. For much of aviation in Europe, this thinking has since become “Safety Management 101.” 

Let’s now apply this thinking to mental health concerns. If we consider the loss of Flight 9525 as the top of the triangle, i.e. a fatal event caused by a mental health breakdown of an operator[1], what about the near misses underneath? How do organisations practically identify and act on the smaller events possibly uncovered as part of a safety investigation, whilst protecting their Just Culture?

Heinrich's Law - the value of 'iceburg data'

As an ex-safety investigator myself, I would suggest that one solution would be a robust process. If a potential mental health concern is identified as part of a safety investigation, or maybe even external to this, “allowances” may have to be put in place to reveal the identity of the individual and allow for the necessary support to be given. However, this is no small feat. Would this impact negatively upon an organisation’s Just Culture? Would this only add to the stigma already surrounding mental health?

If we are to apply Heinrich’s Law to major accidents directly caused by mental health issues, then we need to come up with a practical approach that allows us to uncover the near misses.

Support is needed across all areas of aviation

Mental health support, in the form of Peer Support Programs, appears to be readily available for much of the pilot community across Europe and North America, yet mental health support for other key actors on the frontline of our industry remains limited, at best.

Both days of the Safety Forum consisted mainly of presentations on pilot/ Air Traffic Control Officer (ATCO) peer support programs, these being how the pilot/ATCO community can seek help, or perhaps just a listening ear, when experiencing some kind of mental discomfort. Whilst all presentations were no doubt thought-provoking, it did make me stop and think about how we shouldn’t just focus on the “sharp end of the tunnel”. 

The late James Reason has taught us that all aviation safety incidents and accidents are a chain of events, with human error often being the last link in that chain – error, itself, a symptom and not a cause. Surely, then, we should be applying that same thinking to mental health support. Efforts to support our pilots, i.e. the last barrier in the chain, should be equally applicable to anyone who touches an aircraft, either literally or figuratively. Our line mechanics, our dispatchers, our loading staff, to name a few.

The pilot operating a 10-hour flight across the Atlantic wants to make completely sure that the engineer who fixed the fault on engine number 2 shortly before pushback is on their A-game. What if they were struggling with things at home? What if they’re suffering from financial trouble? Maybe they’re going through a bitter divorce, and today’s the day they received the divorce papers? 

We need to put poor mental health into human factors language and think of it as a significant distraction, very capable of diminishing a human’s ability to perform adequately, regardless of said human’s role within the cycle.

Greater demand for mental health support

My final key takeaway: “Gen Z” expects more of us. They demand a greater work-life balance, prioritise individuality and are far more willing than any previous generation to talk about their own mental health concerns.

Let’s face it, younger generations often get a bad name (and I say that as a young millennial myself!). “Lazy”, “too reliant on others”, “addicted to social media”, the list goes on. But it was great to hear a more seasoned professional at the Safety Forum stand up in front of some of the world’s leading human factors specialists and say, “we need to learn from them.”

Gen Z, or those born between 1995 and 2012, are now actively searching for an organisation’s mental health policy before accepting a job. They have minimal (if any) issues in opening up about how they feel, good or bad. 

It’s time to learn from them.

…especially if we want aviation to remain attractive and fill the gap of 300,000 pilots, 300,000 maintenance engineers and 600,000 cabin crew needed over the next 10 years[2].