Case study: How Air France-KLM promotes flight safety

What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2014 Corporate Social Responsibility Report Air France-KLM identified a range of material issues, such as biofuel, noise and air quality, fleet development, health and safety at work, customer relations. Among these, with 87.4 million passengers carried in 2014, flight safety stands out as Air France-KLM’s top material issue.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The organization should identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups Air France-KLM engages with:

How stakeholder engagement was made to identify material issues

Stakeholder engagement plays a major part in Air France and KLM’s CSR strategy. Stakeholders are identified as actors that are significantly involved in the two airlines’ activities and who can affect Air France-KLM’s ability to successfully implement its strategy. In 2014, Air France and KLM carried out an integrated materiality process in order to map the material CSR topics related to their business and operations. In this process, amongst others, an external study was conducted seeking the views of various stakeholder groups.

To prioritize and rank the topics, internal and external stakeholder inputs were used. Surveys were conducted amongst employees, customers, corporates and NGOs mainly in France and The Netherlands. These included Air France-KLM Group senior decision makers as well. From the results, a materiality matrix was developed showing the most material aspects for the Group. 28 material aspects were identified including safety, risk management, CO₂ reduction, biofuels, sustainable procurement, ethics, human rights. To make the matrix easier to read, these aspects were clustered into the categories: Governance, Environment, Customer Experience, Responsible Human Resources and Local Development.

What actions were taken by Air France-KLM to promote flight safety?

In its 2014 Corporate Social Responsibility Report Air France-KLM set the following targets for promoting flight safety, based on the company’s approach to materiality – on taking action on what matters, where it matters:

• Adhering to international aviation safety standards

All of the Group’s businesses are subject to extensive controls and certification. They meet extremely strict standards and the highest level of regulations in the industry, at European level with the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and globally with the International Air Transport Association (IATA), whose IOSA operational safety audit is a standard for the industry. Following the IOSA safety audit in September 2014 and January 2015, Air France and KLM were IOSA re-certified for a further two years.

• Upgrading and updating Air France and KLM’s Safety Management Systems (SMS)

To achieve the highest attainable standard of flight safety, both airlines have been in the process of upgrading and updating their respective Safety Management Systems (SMS). The SMS deals specifically with risk management in aviation. It is comprehensively integrated into the organization, processes and culture of the company and is validated at the highest level of management within the Group and by training and awareness building initiatives among staff members. Air France’s Integrated Management System (IMS) covers the following domains: flight safety, health and occupational safety, quality of service, operational performance, environment, food safety and security. It analyzes and manages risks in an orchestrated approach. The IMS ensures safe performance, transverse consistency, continuous improvement, global management, for all processes within these domains. KLM’s Integrated Safety Management System (ISMS) covers the domains of operational safety, occupational safety, operational security and environmental safety. ISMS provides a framework for continuously reducing safety risks in all these domains to an acceptable level of safety. In 2014 KLM was successfully audited on the ISMS by the Dutch Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

• Promoting a culture of safety

The safety of operations rests upon a shared commitment to rigor, vigilance, individual responsibility and mutual trust. Employees play a key role in the system, which involves a continuous cycle of improvement. Air France and KLM promote a safety culture, encouraging employees to report possible unsafe situations, incidents or accidents, making sure no action is taken against employees who report or are involved in a safety occurrence or hazard. To maintain the highest level of staff skills, the Group constantly improves its training programs and implements crisis prevention plans. Communication and promotion are key in building a safety culture. In 2014, three Flight Safety workshops, based on the re-enactment of a real event, brought together over 700 employees from all Air France divisions. KLM issues SafetyF@cts and e-newsletters to inform managers and employees on safety-related topics and safety principles. Safety Champions ensure awareness and inspire safe employee behavior in all divisions.

• Protecting customers, employees and assets through the Group’s security procedures

The Group’s security procedures aim to protect customers, employees and assets (aircraft, facilities and IT systems). This includes various measures such as risk analysis of Air France-KLM’s business and operations and the systematic inspection of aircraft, passengers, baggage, cargo and employees. These procedures, which are subject to strict regulation, are carried out with a constant concern for the privacy of passengers and employees. To ensure the highest level of protection for their customers and employees in over 100 countries and 200 cities, Air France and KLM’s security departments constantly monitor international geopolitical developments. Dedicated teams are responsible for ensuring continuous flight operations and where necessary, for implementing additional security measures.

Which GRI indicators/Standards have been addressed?

The GRI indicators/Standards addressed in this case are:

1) G4-14: Report whether and how the precautionary approach or principle is addressed by the organization and the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 102-11 Precautionary Principle or approach

2) G4-PR1: Percentage of significant product and service categories for which health and safety impacts are assessed for improvement – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 416-1 Assessment of the health and safety impacts of product and service categories

References:

1) This case study is based on published information by Air France-KLM, located at the links below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original, please revert to the following links:

http://database.globalreporting.org/

http://www.airfranceklm.com/en/activities/passenger-transport (June 2016)

2) http://www.fbrh.co.uk/en/global-reporting-initiative-gri-g4-guidelines-download-page

3) https://g4.globalreporting.org/Pages/default.aspx

4) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/

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