SAFA Skysailor Magazine

52 SKY SAILOR September-October-November | SPRING 2026 Building a good safety culture at Wicked Wings – Part 1: Communication and restorative enforcement by Stefanie Becker In a recent interview (Skysailor Autumn 2026 ) , Carol Liang asked me: “How do you build a good safety culture?” A myriad of ideas sprung to mind – from my dual roles as a SSO Paragliding, as well as a researcher in attention, perception and decision-making. All of these ideas seemed very important, but I could not easily distill them into a simple answer at the time… I believe we have built a good safety culture in my club (Wicked Wings, Toowoomba, QLD), and I want to share some things that were instrumental in getting there: Using good communication instead of penalties Flying communities are all different, and what I’m about to outline won’t fit all. What works for one club may not work for another. Many clubs here and overseas follow a system where they advise new members and visiting pilots to read the club and site rules, and expect everyone to follow these. Violation of any rules is often harshly penalised – up to flying bans. While widespread, this approach is not very effective. Responsibility to preserve club sites is placed on pilots who have not yet been there (new and visiting pilots). It also assumes pilots have read the rules, understood them, remember them, and apply them correctly on-site. However, research on memory and learning sug- gests such assumptions are often unrealis- tic. Memory is limited [1,2,3] and leaky [4,5] (see Green Box). In addition, this approach does not foster building a good safety culture. It