Press Release: CANSO launches new Safety Culture Benchmarking Programme
Montreal, Canada – 20 April 2026 – CANSO is delighted to announce the official launch of its Safety Culture Benchmarking Programme, aimed at ANSPs who wish to join a community of peers committed to improving their safety culture. The launch is marked by a CANSO webinar on Thursday 23 April, where interested ANSPs can find out more and join the programme.
The initiative is designed and implemented by a consortium including Austro Control, NAV Canada and Firstfruits Services (a change management consultancy). A Memorandum of Understanding was agreed between CANSO, Austro Control and Firstfruits to deliver the benchmarking programme.
The core product is an entirely free 16-question employee survey to gauge safety culture maturity, using a refined version of EUROCONTROL’s original 64-question set. ANSPs will gather the data themselves, with a standardised set of demographics, then share that data with CANSO to enable comparisons.
All data is gathered and hosted in line with CANSO Safety Data Governance best practice.The questions were refined, tested and validated by NATS, Austro Control, NAV Canada and skyguide over several years, eventually becoming a final set of 16 questions covering four quadrants:
- Open and Honest Conversations about Safety
- Generating a Feeling of Healthy Unease
- Employees Ask Questions and Act
- Ground-Up Safety Responsibility.
The cross-ANSP initiative exploring these areas won CANSO’s Safety Achievement Award in 2025.
ANSPs who participate will have their scores benchmarked against the industry average or can choose to share data with their peers for a further level of detail, in turn receiving data from other ANSPs which have opted to share data.
If ANSPs need, additional paid support can be made available for safety workshops, survey hosting, data analysis, reports or recommendations to decision makers.
CANSO intends this new initiative to generate momentum around ANSP safety culture, encouraging ANSPs to reach new levels of excellence as the industry strives for world-leading safety culture standards. For more information, email safety@canso.org, or click here to attend the webinar on Thursday 23 April, 13-14:30 CEST.
