Senior Editor

Jerry Siebenmark

Bombardier’s decision to proceed with an in-person Safety Standdown on November 2 and 3 in Wichita was helped in large part by NBAA’s move to host BACE in October, the Montreal-based airframer’s executive v-p of services and support and corporate strategy, Jean-Christophe Gallagher, told AIN. “Clearly with NBAA actually doing their show in Las&nbsp;Vegas, it kind of set the tone for the industry coming back together [post-pandemic],” Gallagher said.
“So we saw this as an opportunity to piggyback on NBAA’s move and come in with an in-person Safety Standown," he added. "We knew that we would have fewer numbers in person—we’ve had years here [in Wichita] where we had more than 500 people—but yeah, it was time to come back together. I think we were ready for that.”
This year’s event—the 25th edition of the standdown—attracted 200 in-person attendees and another 1,100 participants from 20 countries who attended the presentations via webcast, an option Bombardier began offering in 2010. That 200 number was largely on purpose, Gallagher added, an effort by Bombardier to maintain some sort of social distancing given that the effects of the pandemic have yet to be fully muted.
“It was important for Bombardier to continue to show leadership on this topic and bring the whole industry together,” Gallagher said. “As you can see from the attendees, it’s not only our competitors coming, it’s our customers, it’s people from the military, it’s people from the airlines, it’s from all over the industry. And we really want to make this a non-partisan event.”
“Everybody’s welcome,” he added. “Everybody coming together to talk about the most important topic in all of aviation: safety.”
Standdown’s roots lay with Learjet, where demonstration pilots there began holding an internal human-factors safety workshop that in 1996 blossomed into a free event for all corporate flight departments and customers, regardless of brand allegiance and ownership. The number of attendees is generally only limited to the capacity of the site where it’s held. Since then, more than 10,000 people from the aviation industry have attended standdown seminars either in-person or online from countries including Brazil, Canada, China, Mexico, Switzerland, and the U.S.
Tony Kern, CEO of Convergent Performance and a consistent standdown presenter, was in on the ground-floor planning of the event when Bombardier opened it to all flight departments and customers. “It took tremendous courage at that point in time for Bombardier to do this because no one was doing it and everybody said if you have a safety standdown, competitors will use it against you,” Kern told AIN. “But Bombardier had the insight to see—and quite honestly, at that point in time I don’t believe there was any marketing discussion about it—there was a need in business aviation that needed to be met.”
Kern—whose “Armored Knight” presentation at this year’s event stressed the importance of linking the aviation professional to an organization’s safety management system and vice versa— thinks that over the years standdown has had an impact on far more than the 10,000 who have attended it in person or online. “I bet it’s 50,000 that have actually seen and heard about [Safety Standdown],” he said.
Kern points to a few years ago where he was attending an aviation conference in Europe. Another man attending the conference and whose name tag indicated he was from Zimbabwe got on the hotel elevator with Kern. “He’s looking at me and I’m looking at him and we recognize each other but we don’t know from where,” Kern explained. “And…just as we’re about to get off, he says, ‘Falduckfish,’"—a term used by Kern in his standdown presentations describing pilots who strive to be more like a falcon and less like a catfish.
"And when we get off the elevator he goes around and he says, ‘Do you remember that thing we watched?' And they watched [standdown] on the live stream from Africa. So you have no idea how many people are out there picking things up,” Kern said.
Besides Kern, general session presentations and workshops were led by 20 other instructors. Also presenting were NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen and FAA Central Region regional administrator Joe Miniace.

<figure style="margin:0;">
<div style="margin-bottom:5px;"><img alt data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="5ead8faf-d7fd-454e-bff0-50ce7bdb5c67" src="/sites/default/files/transitionweb_image.jpg" width="2400" height="1200" loading="lazy"></div>
<figcaption style="font-size:1.5rem;line-height:1.2;font-style:italic;">From left, Chris Milligan, Bombardier v-p of pre-owned aircraft services and flight operations, was introduced as the new leader of Safety Standdown by Jean-Christophe Gallagher, executive v-p of services and support and corporate strategy, at the event held on November 2-3 at the Hyatt Regency in Wichita. Milligan takes over from Andy Nureddin, who led standdown for 15 years and is planning to retire at the end of 2022. (Photo: Bombardier)</figcaption>
</figure>

Bombardier used the standdown to also announce a change in the event’s leadership, which for the past 15 years has been helmed by Andy Nureddin, Global 7500 fleet leader and former v-p of customer support. Nureddin plans to retire at the end of 2022.
Gallagher introduced Chris Milligan, v-p of preowned aircraft services and flight operations, as the new leader of the standdown. Bombardier also announced that Nick Verdea, director of aviation and corporate travel for The Williams Company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as the winner of the 2021 Bombardier Safety Standdown Award, which is presented to an aviation professional who has demonstrated exemplary dedication to improving aviation safety through the Safety Standdown principles of "learn, apply, share."
As for the future of the standdown, Gallagher acknowledged that putting on the free event requires “significant financial resources. But we’ve always protected this as part of our portfolio of things that we do.” Organizing and hosting the standdown, as well as actively taking an industry leadership role in the area of sustainability and reducing the industry’s carbon emissions, is another key part of that portfolio, he stressed.
“Those are two fundamental initiatives for us that we believe in, that we believe we can bring our expertise to contribute to advancing those topics,” Gallagher said. “That’s why we keep doing it. As an industry, we’re all successful when everybody’s coming together and sharing.”

News and information on safety procedures and concerns.

BACE Helped BBD Leaders To Resume In-person Standdown

Bombardier's 2021 Safety Standdown—the 25th edition—attracted 200 in-person attendees and another 1,100 participants from 20 countries via webcast.

2024 Corporate Aviation Leadership Summit

Amy Wilder

News and issues relating to business, corporate and private aviation, primarily regarding turbine-engine-powered airplanes and helicopters. Subjects include aircraft, engines, maintenance, operations, personnel, acquisitions, accidents, safety, security, and training.

Altitude and course deviation, traffic proximity remain top categories

ACSF Data Shows Stable Bizav Risk Amid 2026 Pressures

Kerry Lynch

News and issues relating to international air transport and cargo carriers, national airlines and regional airlines, including aircraft, engines, personnel, acquisitions, accidents, safety, security and training.

Essential news and analysis on the defense aerospace business. Your trusted source for new and ongoing programs and requirements in military aircraft (manned and unmanned), engines, avionics, weapons and associated systems, including ground-based air defense.

Aircraft remained within separation guidance but neared each other after the presidential helicopter was unable to alert ATC

Faulty Comms Preceded Marine One/Envoy Close Call

Graham leaving agency within months of confirmation to another term

NTSB Vice Chair Michael Graham To Retire October 2

Stuart “Kipp” Lau

News about bills, laws, regulations and other governmental decisions affecting aviation and aerospace. Topics include FAA re-authorizations, taxes on fuel and aviation activities, environmental legislation, ICAO decisions, governmental mediation of labor conflicts and World Trade Organization disputes and decisions.

UK CAA concerned over rise in unstable approaches continuing to land

AINsight: Go-arounds Are a Normal and Expected Outcome

News about significant aircraft accidents and information from accident reports.

News and issues regarding all manner of civil and military rotorcraft and their powerplants, including helicopters, tilt rotors and unmanned air vehicles.

Helicopters more than twice as vulnerable to loss of visual reference accidents than airplanes

TSB: Rotorcraft More Prone To Loss-of-visual-reference Accidents

Charlotte Bailey

News about environmental issues relating to aircraft operations, including noise issues, emissisions, and regulations. See Fuel for biofuel.

News and issues relating to the aerospace industry that are related to the science, engineering and business of flight in space involving civil, industrial and military applications, and similar topics related to flight in the atmosphere of the Earth that are not covered more directly by other AINonline subject channels. In other words, both astronautical and aeronautical subjects, except for those aeronautical topics that are specifically covered elsewhere on this website.

More In Safety

ACSF Data Shows Stable Bizav Risk Amid 2026 Pressures

Altitude and course deviation, traffic proximity remain top categories

Faulty Comms Preceded Marine One/Envoy Close Call

Aircraft remained within separation guidance but neared each other after the presidential helicopter was unable to alert ATC

NTSB Vice Chair Michael Graham To Retire October 2

Graham leaving agency within months of confirmation to another term

AINsight: Go-arounds Are a Normal and Expected Outcome

UK CAA concerned over rise in unstable approaches continuing to land

TSB: Rotorcraft More Prone To Loss-of-visual-reference Accidents

Helicopters more than twice as vulnerable to loss of visual reference accidents than airplanes

EASA: Atmospheric Icing Insufficiently Understood

European air safety agency calls for more comprehensive studies into phenomenon

Embry-Riddle Introduces ‘Safer Skies’ Video Podcasts

First episode features three-time space shuttle veteranJanet Kavandi

Li-ion Thermal Runaways on the Rise in Aircraft Cabins

Numbers are rising and the risk of a serious incident is increasing

AIN Products

SUBSCRIPTIONS

RESOURCES

ABOUT AIN