Flight Safety Foundation To Honor Industry Leaders At 2025 International Aviation Safety Summit In Lisbon

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia – The Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) will recognize two senior aviation executives for their leadership, innovation, and contributions to global aviation safety during the 78th annual International Aviation Safety Summit (IASS), taking place November 4–6, 2025, at the Epic Sana Lisboa Hotel in Lisbon.

This year’s summit, themed “Culture. Collaboration. Capability: Building the Foundations for the Next Generation of Aviation Safety”, will bring together hundreds of global safety leaders, regulators, and industry executives for three days of panel discussions, presentations, and collaborative dialogue.

Awards and recipients

Yannick Malinge, Senior Vice President and Chief Product Safety Officer at Airbus, will receive the Foundation’s Jerome Lederer Safety Leadership Medal in recognition of his visionary leadership in advancing aviation safety. Throughout his career, Malinge has been a driving force behind strengthening Airbus’s safety culture, setting new benchmarks for industrywide safety practices, and championing support for Airbus customers around the globe. Beyond his corporate role, he is widely respected for his mentorship of the next generation of safety leaders and his influence as a thought leader across the aviation industry.

Ratan Khatwa, Executive Technical Fellow at The Boeing Co. and formerly a senior chief engineer at Honeywell, will receive the Foundation’s David Morrison Innovation Award for his pioneering work in advancing flight deck technologies and aviation safety. During his career, Khatwa has helped drive the development of groundbreaking systems such as the enhanced ground-proximity warning system, advanced weather radar, synthetic vision, and runway safety alerting tools that are now standard in modern aviation. He has continued to shape the design and certification of integrated flight deck systems across a wide range of aircraft. In addition, Khatwa has provided industrywide leadership across a number of standards and human factors committees.

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“Recognizing Yannick and Ratan is especially fitting because their careers embody the very pillars on which the future of aviation safety depends – culture, collaboration, and capability,” said Dr. Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of the Foundation. “Their leadership and contributions have not only advanced safety within their own organizations but have also elevated safety across the entire global aviation community.”

The Jerome Lederer Safety Leadership Medal was established to recognize an individual or team for making a significant contribution to the advancement of civil aviation safety through demonstrated organizational or industry leadership and by developing or advancing programs that will have a lasting impact on civil aviation. The award is named for Jerry Lederer, one of the founders of Flight Safety Foundation.

The David Morrison Innovation Award, named for another FSF founder, recognizes an individual, a team, or an organization for notable innovation in civil aviation. The award is for both technological innovation and process transformation.

Both awards will be presented on Wednesday, Nov. 5, during a special awards dinner held in conjunction with IASS in Lisbon. The dinner and IASS will both be held at the Epic Sana Lisboa Hotel.

The article Flight Safety Foundation to honor industry leaders at 2025 International Aviation Safety Summit in Lisbon first appeared in TravelDailyNews International.