How IATA Supports Risk-Based Safety Management in Aviation Operations

In today’s complex and high-pressure aviation environment, organizations are increasingly focused on building resilient, risk-based safety systems that go beyond compliance.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is helping lead this shift by offering tools, guidance, and insights that enable a more structured and proactive approach to Safety Management Systems (SMS).

As part of their work to support more than 300 airline members worldwide, IATA promotes a range of solutions—including Bowtie Suite—to strengthen operational risk management. To explore how this works in practice, we spoke with Matthew Lillywhite, Senior Manager Safety Risk at IATA, about their approach to safety management, the value of bowties in daily operations, and how organizations can build a stronger safety culture from the inside out.

The Role of Bowtie in SMS

One of the persistent challenges in implementing SMS is turning broad risk statements into practical, actionable insights. Bowtie helps solve this problem by making risk visible and structured—linking hazards to controls, and supporting discussions that help clarify who is responsible for what. What makes bowtie so useful is that it scales with the organization’s needs.

Whether used as a foundation for building risk awareness in newer teams or to refine and challenge established assumptions in mature systems, bowtie provides a common language that facilitates risk-based decision-making.

Two examples, two scales

The brief walks through this at two different levels of complexity.

In a chemicals scenario, a single top event, a pipe failure between a tank and a liquid pump system, branches out into three threats (mechanical failure, a design mismatch, and vibration or fatigue) and two consequences (a slow release of tank contents and possible combustion). The escalation factor example here is a good one: an isolation valve barrier is only as strong as a responder's ability to reach it, and "isolation valves cannot be accessed due to gas cloud" points straight to a fix, like switching to remote-operated valves.