In (business) aviation, safety is often spoken about as if it were an office, a department, a title, or a file full of manuals. It’s neat, it looks structured, and it gives the impression of control. But the reality we live every day is far more complex.

Safety doesn’t only live in a binder or a dashboard, even though it’s part of it… It lives in the quick call a dispatcher makes when the routing doesn’t feel right. It lives in the engineer who notices a fuel cap sitting strangely on the ramp at 2 a.m. It lives in the co-pilot who admits to their captain that fatigue is catching up with them. These moments rarely make it into an audit, yet they are the heartbeat of our industry.

Business aviation is unique. Our operations are fast, flexible, and sometimes (often?) unpredictable. We take off at short notice. We land in places where infrastructure is minimal. We juggle crew duty limits against client demands. We rely on small teams where one absence or one missed detail can tilt the balance. In this world, safety cannot be outsourced to a single department. It has to belong to everyone.

And that raises difficult questions…
If safety is shared, then who is accountable?
If a junior or new staff member spots something that a senior manager overlooked, how does the organisation react?
Are our rules and processes helping people speak up, or are they quietly encouraging silence?
When things go wrong, are we ready to learn? Or are we still too quick to search for blame?

These are not comfortable questions, but they are vital ones. Because safety is not just about compliance. It is about mindset, and culture. And culture shows itself in how people act under pressure.

Our industry is under more pressure than ever. Airspace is saturated. Airports are at capacity. Supply chains are stretched. Crew are facing tighter rosters and rising fatigue. At the same time, new tools and technologies promise efficiency but can also create distraction. If safety remains locked away in one corner of the organisation, we will miss the weak signals that matter most. But if it becomes a shared responsibility, we gain more eyes, more ears, and more voices.

Shared safety does not mean chaos. It means clarity. It means fewer surprises. It means that the person who sees the problem feels able to raise it. It means that a co-pilot can say “stop” without fear of reprisal. It means that a mechanic can highlight an issue without being buried in bureaucracy.

This is exactly why events such as BASIC matters. On 27 and 28 October in Brussels, BASIC will bring the business aviation community together: operators, crews, OEMs, regulators, handlers, and service providers, in one place. Not to sit through slides, but to work in tribes. To ask the hard questions. To tackle new frontiers like mental health and security alongside the traditional safety discussions. To turn data into shared insight rather than statistics hidden in reports.

BASIC is not a showcase. It’s a working space. You’ll leave not with a badge or a brochure, but with something you can act on the week after. A new habit. A new connection. A new way of looking at risk.

If you lead a team, bring someone from the line. If you fly the line, bring someone who thinks safety meetings are pointless. BASIC is about breaking silos, and that starts with who sits at the table.

Because in the end, safety will never live in a department. It will always live in us, in the way we choose to act, the way we choose to listen, and the way we choose to care for each other in this demanding, fascinating, high-stakes industry we call business aviation.

Join us in Brussels on 27 and 28 October. BASIC is where safety shifts from procedure to practice, from department to community. And that shift is the one that will keep us safe tomorrow.