The ICAO Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP) 2026–2028 is the world’s master blueprint for managing civil aviation safety and for anyone running aviation training programs, it’s not optional reading. It defines the global safety goals, high-risk categories, and organizational challenges that every approved training organization, airline, and CAA must align with over the next three years. If your training programs aren’t tracking to GASP, you’re already behind.
What Are the Core Changes in the GASP 2026–2028 Edition That Affect Training Programs?
The 2026–2028 GASP edition marks the most significant shift in how global aviation safety strategy is developed since the plan was first introduced in 1997. Rather than relying on expert committees alone, this edition used a set of standardized frameworks and data from multiple sources, including industry input, to identify global safety issues, a fundamentally new development process designed to ensure that goals and targets reflect what states and regions are actually facing.
For aviation training managers, the practical implication is this: the evidence base is now more rigorous than ever, which means training priorities derived from GASP are harder to ignore or defer.
Key revisions in this edition include new targets to address challenges such as insufficient financial resources for safety oversight authorities, the lack of qualified technical personnel, and the need to facilitate assistance to states struggling in certain regions. Each of these challenges has a direct training dimension that we’ll unpack throughout this article.
The edition also retains continuity where continuity matters. The 2026–2028 GASP retains fundamental elements from previous editions, including the majority of the goals and the five global high-risk categories of occurrences (G-HRCs), while introducing new and revised targets and amendments based on feedback from the Fourteenth Air Navigation Conference.
What this means for curriculum planning is significant: if your aviation safety management systems training was built around the previous GASP cycle, the core framework is largely still valid, but the new targets and the three additional risk categories require specific updates, particularly in flight safety training modules covering turbulence, runway operations, and non-powerplant system failures.
The table below summarizes the most training-relevant changes from GASP 2023–2025 to 2026–2028:
| Area | GASP 2023–2025 | GASP 2026–2028 |
|---|---|---|
| G-HRCs | 5 categories | 5 categories (retained) |
| Additional risk categories | Not formally listed | 3 new: turbulence, abnormal runway contact, system/component failure |
| Qualified personnel gap | Referenced | Explicit organizational challenge target (T2.2) |
| Data-driven development | Advisory | Embedded in plan development process |
| Turbulence training | General SMS scope | Specifically elevated as priority risk |
How Do the Five Global High-Risk Categories of Occurrences Shape Flight Safety Training Priorities?
The five G-HRCs are the most direct training signal in the entire GASP document they represent the unsafe outcomes that carry the highest fatality risk, and they should be the backbone of any flight safety training program. These categories cover controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), loss of control in-flight (LOC-I), mid-air collision (MAC), runway incursion (RI), and runway excursion (RE).
In our work with aviation training teams, the G-HRCs are often treated as a compliance checklist rather than a dynamic training architecture. That’s a mistake. ICAO reports that 12% of all scheduled aircraft accidents between 2017 and 2023 involved runway excursions, causing 119 fatalities, a statistic that should directly inform how much time and fidelity you’re investing in runway operations and rejected takeoff scenarios in your training programs.
What’s genuinely new in the 2026–2028 edition is the addition of three “other global risk categories” (G-ORCs) that sit alongside the G-HRCs. Turbulence was the single most frequent accident category in 2024, responsible for 75% of all serious injuries, and climate change is increasing clear-air turbulence frequency. That’s no longer a background risk, it’s a foreground training priority.
This edition addresses three additional types of accidents and serious incidents across ICAO regions: abnormal runway contact, system/component failure or malfunction (non-powerplant), and turbulence encounter, all of which feature prominently in the most frequent accident and serious incident types.
For training managers building or refreshing aviation training programs, this translates into three concrete actions:
- Add or expand turbulence management and clear-air turbulence awareness modules in both initial and recurrent training
- Review CRM and systems malfunction scenarios to cover non-powerplant failures more systematically
- Ensure simulator exercises cover abnormal runway contact scenarios with adequate frequency
The G-HRCs also identify contributing factors, not just end states. Aviation human factors training, crew resource management, fatigue management, and situational awareness, remains a critical upstream intervention for LOC-I and CFIT outcomes. If your training design doesn’t trace from contributing factors back to the G-HRC, you’re addressing symptoms rather than causes.
Why Is the Shortage of Qualified Technical Personnel One of the Biggest Challenges Aviation Training Managers Face Right Now?
The lack of qualified technical personnel is explicitly named in the GASP 2026–2028 as a global organizational challenge, one of the primary issues requiring action at the international, regional, and national levels. The global organizational challenges for 2026–2028 include the lack of qualified technical personnel, primarily aircraft accident investigators and aerodrome inspectors.
From where we sit, this understates the breadth of the problem. The qualified personnel gap runs through flight operations, maintenance, ATC, and training delivery itself. Aviation training managers are simultaneously being asked to upskill existing staff faster, onboard new entrants at scale, and do it with smaller training teams.
The 2026–2028 GASP includes new targets specifically to facilitate assistance to states struggling with insufficient financial resources for safety oversight authorities and the lack of qualified technical personnel. Target T2.2 is particularly relevant here, it signals that regulators at the national level are expected to demonstrate improvement in this area, which means your organization’s training capacity will increasingly be subject to regulatory scrutiny.
This has practical implications for how aviation training programs are structured. Rather than relying primarily on external training providers, organizations need to be building internal training pipelines, developing qualified instructors, maintaining structured on-the-job training records, and documenting competency progression in ways that can be reported against safety performance indicators.
Training management systems (TMS) purpose-built for aviation compliance are proving far more effective here than generic LMS platforms. Where an LMS might track course completion, a TMS can map competency against ICAO SARPs requirements, track regulatory currency for each role, flag gaps before they become audit findings, and generate the kinds of reports a safety oversight function actually needs. Platforms like SimpliTrain, alongside established aviation TMS providers, are positioning for exactly this compliance-documentation use case.
The workforce development dimension of GASP 2026–2028 deserves more attention than it typically gets in policy discussions. Aviation safety oversight improvement depends directly on whether training organizations can close this personnel gap and the responsibility for closing it sits squarely with aviation training managers.
How Should Aviation Safety Management Systems and Training Programs Work Together Under GASP 2026–2028?
SMS training and the SMS itself need to be operationally integrated, not running in parallel. This is one of the areas where we see the biggest gap between compliance intent and operational reality. ICAO requires Safety Management Systems (SMS) for the management of safety risk in air operations, maintenance, air traffic services, aerodromes, flight training, and design and production of aircraft, engines, and propellers. That’s a broad mandate, and it includes training organizations themselves.
The four pillars of aviation safety management: safety policy, safety risk management, safety assurance, and safety promotion, each have a training dimension that most organizations handle inconsistently. Safety policy informs what should be in training; safety risk management should inform what’s prioritized; safety assurance should validate whether training is working; and safety promotion is largely delivered through training.
Under GASP 2026–2028, the integration pressure increases. The GASP goals, targets, and indicators require states and operators to demonstrate safety performance improvement, not just compliance activity. This means sms training aviation programs can no longer be a one-time induction event. They need to be embedded in recurring operational workflows, tied to hazard identification and reporting data, and updated whenever risk profiles change.
What effective SMS-training integration looks like in practice:
| SMS Pillar | Training Integration Point |
|---|---|
| Safety Policy | Policy awareness included in induction and annual refreshers |
| Safety Risk Management | Risk matrix training embedded in type-specific modules |
| Safety Assurance | Training records feed directly into safety performance indicator dashboards |
| Safety Promotion | Just culture, reporting, and human factors training delivered continuously |
GASP provides a collaborative framework for states and regions to manage operational safety risks and organizational challenges through their respective NASPs and RASPs, together with industry. That word “together” is doing a lot of work, it means approved training organizations are expected to be active contributors to national safety planning, not passive recipients of regulations.
If your SMS and your training system don’t talk to each other, if a hazard identified in a safety report doesn’t trigger a training review, or if training completion data isn’t visible in your safety management software, you have a structural gap that will show up in safety audits.
What Safety Performance Indicators Should Aviation Training Managers Be Tracking to Meet GASP Goals?
Safety performance indicators for aviation are the accountability mechanism that connects training outcomes to GASP goals and most training managers underuse them. SPIs are not just a regulatory reporting tool; they’re a feedback loop that tells you whether your flight safety training is actually moving the needle.
ICAO’s indicator catalogue, developed by the Safety Performance Indicator Task Force with input from regulators, industry, and international organizations, supports the effective implementation of State Safety Programmes and SMS, and can be used as safety performance indicators by states and industry alike.
For training managers, the most relevant SPIs fall into three groups:
Operational SPIs track precursor event rates for G-HRCs, things like runway incursion reports, GPWS activations, and turbulence injury rates. If your training program addresses LOC-I contributing factors and these rates aren’t improving, the training content or delivery needs to change.
Organizational SPIs track things like the proportion of staff with current regulatory training, number of open corrective actions from safety audits, and training hours per operational role per year. These are the indicators most directly under an aviation training manager’s control.
System SPIs look at SMS implementation levels, reporting culture health, and safety assurance cycle completion rates. These take longer to move but reflect the cumulative effect of training investment.
The GASP goals, targets, and indicators for the 2026–2028 edition were derived from analysis of global safety issues requiring action at the international, regional, and national levels. Training managers who understand which indicators their organization is being measured against, at state, regional, and ICAO levels, can build training programs that produce demonstrable safety outcomes rather than just compliance outputs.
Aviation quality assurance processes should be pulling training completion, competency assessment results, and recurrent training currency data and feeding them into the SPI monitoring cycle. If your training records are in a spreadsheet or a generic LMS with no reporting integration, you’re producing data that can’t be used for safety performance measurement.
How Do Aviation Training Managers Align Their Programs with National and Regional Safety Plans Under GASP?
Aligning aviation training programs with NASPs and RASPs is the operational translation layer between GASP’s global strategy and what actually happens in your training room or simulator. Over half of ICAO’s member states have already published a NASP in line with the GASP, and all current NASPs can be found on ICAO’s website. If your state has a published NASP, your training programs should be explicitly mapped to its safety priorities.
The NASP development process itself provides a useful framework for training program design: identify hazards and safety deficiencies, develop a list of prioritized safety issues, set goals and targets, conduct a gap analysis, and measure safety performance. Aviation training managers who follow this same logic, replacing “state” with “organization”, end up with training programs that are both more defensible in audits and more effective in practice.
The GASP-NASP alignment process includes steps such as conducting a self-evaluation, identifying hazards and safety deficiencies, developing a list of prioritized national safety issues, setting goals and targets, and measuring safety performance. Each of these steps has a direct training planning analogue.
For organizations operating across multiple regions, the regional aviation safety plans (RASPs) add another layer of specificity. The Asia-Pacific RASP, for example, has region-specific high-risk categories that supplement the global G-HRCs. Aviation training standards in those regions need to reflect both global and regional priorities, not just one or the other.
A practical alignment checklist for training managers:
| Step | Action |
|---|---|
| 1. Get the NASP | Download your state’s NASP from ICAO’s website |
| 2. Map G-HRCs | Cross-reference your current curricula against the five G-HRCs and three G-ORCs |
| 3. Identify gaps | Use the NASP gap analysis to find training areas underserved by current programs |
| 4. Set indicators | Define SPIs for each training program that connect to NASP targets |
| 5. Report and review | Build a quarterly review cycle that feeds training data into your SMS |
Aviation regulatory compliance isn’t just about passing audits, it’s about demonstrating to your CAA, to ICAO, and to your own safety function that your training investment is producing measurable safety improvements.
What Tools and Systems Support GASP-Aligned Aviation Safety Management and Training Delivery?
The right infrastructure makes GASP alignment sustainable rather than a recurring firefighting exercise. Most aviation organizations are running some combination of an LMS, a standalone SMS platform, and manual spreadsheet tracking, and that combination consistently fails to produce the integrated reporting GASP-aligned safety management requires.
The growing consensus in aviation training management is that a dedicated TMS is more fit-for-purpose than a generic LMS for regulatory compliance environments. Where LMS platforms excel at content delivery and completion tracking, aviation training managers need tools that can:
- Track regulatory currency by role and license type against ICAO SARPs requirements
- Generate audit-ready reports showing training compliance status across an organization
- Integrate with SMS data to trigger training reviews based on safety reports
- Support competency-based training assessment, not just pass/fail course completion
- Map curricula to GASP goals, NASP targets, and specific G-HRC contributing factors
Aviation safety management system software options range from enterprise-level platforms like Veristar, SafetyNet, and Intelex to mid-market solutions. On the training delivery side, platforms like SimpliTrain are building aviation-specific compliance tracking alongside content delivery, positioning them alongside more established TMS providers. The key evaluation criterion is always the same: can it produce the SPI data your safety function needs?
GASP provides guidelines for regional and national safety work and safety management structures and takes into account regional differences in aviation safety challenges. That regional sensitivity matters for tool selection too, an organization operating in multiple ICAO regions needs a TMS that can manage different regulatory frameworks simultaneously.
Aviation safety audit preparation is another area where integrated tooling pays dividends. When your training records, competency assessments, and regulatory currency data are in the same system as your SMS corrective actions and safety performance indicators, preparing for a CAA audit or USOAP review becomes a reporting exercise rather than a data assembly crisis.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is the ICAO Global Aviation Safety Plan and how often is it updated?
The ICAO Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP), published as ICAO Doc 10004, is the master planning document for managing aviation safety at the global level. It sets safety goals, targets, and indicators that cascade into regional and national safety plans. It is reviewed and updated every three years, prior to each ICAO Assembly session, to reflect current safety challenges and data.
Q2. What are the five global high-risk categories of occurrences in GASP 2026–2028?
The five G-HRCs are controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), loss of control in-flight (LOC-I), mid-air collision (MAC), runway incursion (RI), and runway excursion (RE). These have remained consistent across GASP editions because they account for the overwhelming majority of fatal outcomes in commercial aviation. The 2026–2028 edition additionally highlights turbulence encounter, abnormal runway contact, and system/component failure as “other global risk categories.”
Q3. How does GASP 2026–2028 affect aviation SMS training requirements?
GASP 2026–2028 reinforces ICAO Annex 19 requirements for SMS implementation across all approved training organizations, operators, aerodromes, and ATS providers. The new edition places stronger emphasis on data-driven safety performance measurement, meaning SMS training aviation programs need to include not just hazard identification and risk assessment, but also how to collect, analyze, and report safety data in line with GASP indicators.
Q4. What does "lack of qualified technical personnel" mean for aviation training managers?
It means training workforce development is now a regulatory safety issue, not just an operational HR concern. GASP 2026–2028 Target T2.2 specifically addresses the shortage of qualified accident investigators and aerodrome inspectors, but the personnel gap runs wider. Aviation training managers are expected to demonstrate structured competency development pipelines, tracked against safety performance indicators, that show improvement over the plan’s three-year cycle.
Q5. How should aviation training programs connect to national aviation safety plans (NASPs)?
Training programs should be mapped to the safety priorities and targets identified in your state’s NASP. This means reviewing the NASP gap analysis, identifying which G-HRCs and organizational challenges are prioritized at the national level, and building curricula that address contributing factors to those risks. Training completion and competency data should feed into the NASP’s safety performance monitoring cycle.
Q6. What is the difference between an LMS and a TMS for aviation training compliance?
An LMS (learning management system) manages content delivery and completion tracking, it’s designed for general learning environments. A TMS (training management system) for aviation is designed around regulatory compliance: it tracks license currency, maps training to ICAO SARPs and GASP indicators, generates audit-ready reports, and integrates with SMS workflows. For GASP-aligned safety management, a TMS provides the functional infrastructure an LMS typically cannot.
Conclusion
The ICAO Global Aviation Safety Plan 2026–2028 is not a document you read once and file away. It’s a three-year operational mandate that should be shaping your training curricula, your safety performance indicator dashboards, your SMS integration strategy, and your workforce development priorities right now. The new emphasis on data-driven goal setting, the explicit attention to qualified personnel shortages, and the addition of turbulence and runway contact as elevated risk categories all point in the same direction: aviation training programs need to be more evidence-based, more integrated with safety management systems, and more accountable to measurable outcomes.
If you take one thing from this article, let it be this, the gap between your training records and your safety performance indicators is the gap between compliance and genuine safety improvement. Closing that gap is exactly what the global aviation safety plan is asking every training manager in civil aviation to do.
Training managers who want to understand how GASP priorities translate into specific regulatory obligations should start with how ICAO, IATA, and EASA shape aviation compliance training requirements at the operational level.
