Bombardier on Thursday wrapped up its three-day Safety Standdown in Fort Worth, Texas emphasizing elevating standards, managing risk, achieving measurable goals, and improving culture to more than 500 attendees and many more online. By the opening of the third day, the webcast of the event had already attracted more than 1,500 visits online and surpassed the goal for views from more than 20 counties, reaching 25, Bombardier demo pilot and Safety Standdown host Franco Pietracupa announced on Thursday morning. Webcast visits over the past several years have totalled 8,600, he added. While Safety Standdown made its first appearance in Fort Worth this year, it is anticipated to return to its home of Wichita, Kansas, where it has been held for decades.

This year’s event featured nearly 50 workshops spread out in the afternoons over three days, enabling attendees to take a deeper dive into a range of topics; from controlled flight into terrain, hypoxia awareness, and international operations, to runway surface risks, elevating standards through coaching, and predictability of maintenance errors, to name a few.

Andy Nureddin, v-p of customer support for Bombardier Business Aircraft, helped kick off the event, saying, “Safety Standdown continues to improve year after year. We all have a shared passion to enhance safety in this industry.”

He noted that the event was established by a small group of pilots, comprising the Learjet demonstration team, who asked themselves “a simple but critical question of how can we make operations safer.” This grew into a movement, he said, and Safety Standdown has “grown to become one of the most comprehensive human factors safety conferences in the industry,” promoting the culture of safety, continuing education, and professionalism in aviation.

Attendees represent a range of geography and organizations from nearly every sector of the aviation industry: the military, commercial airlines, government, industry associations, law enforcement, private operators, OEMs, and flight departments. “One of the things that makes Safety Standdown special is it is both inclusive and agnostic,” Nureddin said. “Here, we have a common goal to make our skies safe as can be. We’re here to live and breathe the Safety Standdown creed, to learn, apply and share.”

The theme Elevate Your Standards was emphasized throughout the general session by speakers, many of whom were familiar faces to the event, including retired U.S. Navy Capt. Al Worthy, who spoke on a theme that asked the audience to address what defines them. The FBI’s Amy Grubb also returned to the main stage to discuss coaching, a topic she carried into the workshops. They were among the 16 speakers who appeared on the main stage, along with the event’s host Pietracupa.