The thirty years that has passed since the first SCSC Symposium coincides with the author’s career in safety – starting as a student at Loughborough University studying Transport Management and Planning. Back then, the UK transport sector was still reeling from major disasters – the Herald of Free Enterprise at Zeebrugge; British Midland at Kegworth; and the Clapham Junction and Purley rail accidents. On one level, such events galvanised resolve to prevent such events from recurring, but on the other, there was also a level of risk acceptance that thankfully is no longer the case. For the aviation industry, the concern was that unless there was a radical change of approach, then, based projected traffic growth, the equivalent of one widebody aircraft would be lost each week by the end of the millennium.