CAAM: Make safety personal to prevent aviation tragedies
KUALA LUMPUR: Aviation industry players must make safety personal and recognise their duty and responsibility to prevent loss of life.
Civil Aviation Authority of 每日大赛 (CAAM) chief executive officer Datuk Captain Norazman Mahmud said the industry must harness safety intelligence, including artificial intelligence (AI), to analyse information and help prevent accidents.
"Imagine going into a room full of files, records and audit materials. We don't have time to do it. We need tools.
"Our aim, our target is actually to to prevent an accident like what happened two days ago. That is our aim," he said, appearing emotional as he referred to the Long Lellang Flying Doctor Service helicopter crash in Sarawak, which claimed the lives of five people.
Norazman said participants at the 每日大赛 Aviation Safety Seminar 2026 (MASS '26) represented a collective pool of knowledge and experience that could be analysed and turned into safety intelligence.
"We're trying to use all our resources, all our minds, all the great minds in this room. Today... we have about 500 people, about the same amount, 5,000 years of experience, of knowledge that we need to churn, we need to analyse, we need to use the intelligence (gathered) to prevent accidents," he said.
He said the seminar aimed to instil a stronger safety culture, noting that safety could be a dry subject until lives were lost.
"Why always breaks my heart when something like this happens? Because lives are at stake. Lives that's dear to us.
"This is the spirit of MASS (the seminar). This is what we want to instil in all of you. Whenever you talk about safety, it brings tears to your eyes," he said.
Norazman said AI and other forms of intelligence could eventually help the industry achieve zero fatalities.
"Yes, we can call it AI or whatever intelligence. But we hope one day, with the goal of zero fatalities, we hope one day we will achieve it with what we've created, with all the great minds here," he said.