CAAC Deputy Administrator Lyu Erxue, leading the CAAC delegation, attended the second CAAC-EASA Aviation Safety Conference held in Madrid, Spain, from October 29 to 31, and delivered a keynote speech during the conference.

Lyu mentioned that the first CAAC-EASA Aviation Safety Conference opened a new chapter of civil aviation exchanges and cooperation between China and Europe. This year’s conference, by focusing its discussion on further deepening China-Europe civil aviation cooperation and facilitating safe aviation development in China and Europe, is of great importance to the building of new cooperative partnership in civil aviation between China and Europe.

Lyu also pointed out that against the background of economic globalization, comprehensively deepening China-Europe civil aviation cooperation and further promoting safe and sound development of civil aviation in China and Europe is the common goal and responsibility of China and Europe. Therefore, Lyu proposed that the two sides should continue to make efforts in innovating safety regulation model, expanding bilateral relationship regarding airworthiness certification, improving general aviation development and deepening cooperation in science, education and innovation, and strengthen exchanges and cooperation in the following four aspects: first, constantly enhancing mutual trust and cooperating for win-win results via maintaining communication and close coordination on major affairs and heated issues related to civil aviation under the bilateral and multilateral frameworks such as ICAO; second, expanding Aviation Partnership Project (APP) cooperation and deepening new partnership, to realize which CAAC will continue to facilitate the achievement of a broader and deeper cooperation on APP project, and is willing to work with the European side to practically strengthen exchanges and cooperation at all levels and in all sectors with the goal of building new partnership; third, accelerating discussion and negotiation on important documents such as Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement (BASA) between China and Europe and its annex, and Technical Implementation Procedures, so as to promote consistency of regulations and standards; and fourth, strengthening culture exchanges in regulation and standard development, product design, talent training and scientific innovation, for improved civil aviation safety performance.

During the conference, the CAAC and EASA delegations held talks, where the two sides conducted in-depth exchanges on BASA negotiation, product approval review and China-Europe APP work progress in this year and arrangement for the coming year.

At present, civil aviation has become an important field for exchanges and cooperation between China and Europe. By September, 2018, China has signed Bilateral Air Services Agreement with 27 of the 28 EU member states, and realized air connectivity with 18 EU countries. 15 Chinese airlines has launched European routes, and 27 European airlines operate flights to China, with 627 flights in total flying between China and Europe every week. From January to September, 2018, 5.46 million passengers flew between China and Europe, an increase of 20.2% over the same period last year.