Safety is a concept generally ingrained in the human mind; we will consider 'absence of danger' as its principal definition. Safety is something related to all human activities and therefore every civil society is organized (or should be organized) to guarantee public safety in relation to one's own or others' activities. This is certainly a moral obligation, but it is also a practical demand because accidents, causing damage to persons and properties, have a social cost. This is also the reason why human activities that could cause damage to persons and properties are controlled by national states through regulations.

We will deal specifically with safety related to aeronautical activities, starting by considering what we have defined as the main conventional flight safety factors: man, the environment, and the machine.

1. Man is intended here as an active part of the flight operations; we then consider pilots, maintenance manpower, air traffic controllers, and others. Clearly, it is important to be able to rely on very skilled people in order to avoid errors that cause accidents or catastrophes in flight operations. It is then of paramount importance to place these people in a legislative and organized context to guarantee a suitable level of professional training, updating of techniques and procedures, and psychological and physical fitness. National states entrust special public institutions with the responsibility for such obligations.

2. The environment covers all the external factors that can have an influence on the flying of an aircraft. This includes meteorological...