ABSTRACT This study explores managerial and supervisory perceptions, practices, and challenges that define safety culture in the Greek aviation sector. Using structured interviews with managerial and supervisory personnel across Airlines, Approved Training Organizations, Air Traffic Control, and Ground Handling, the research examines how safety values are perceived, enacted, and institutionalized within daily operations. A thematic analysis identified nine dimensions of safety culture, revealing differences in management commitment, reporting behavior, and safety communication across operational domains. Results show that while regulatory compliance is generally substantial, variations in leadership visibility, resource allocation, and organizational structure shape how safety culture is interpreted and operationalised across domains. The proportion of participants endorsing each finding is reported throughout to indicate the prevalence of views within the sample. Rather than providing a maturity assessment, the study offers an exploratory, theory‐informed account of managerial perceptions of safety culture, identifying systemic organizational pain points and highlighting areas for strengthening learning, trust, and leadership engagement across Greek aviation. The findings enhance the literature on safety culture by offering a qualitative perspective on how organizational structures and leadership practices influence the practical implementation of safety culture within a national aviation system, and by representing the resulting control and feedback weaknesses through a systems‐theoretic (STAMP‐style) control structure that surfaces specific gaps for future research.
Kontarakis et al. (Sun,) studied this question.