Does sustainability enhance or compromise aviation safety? A systematic review

Aviation is pushing hard towards net-zero, yet what this means for safety remains poorly understood. This systematic review analyses 129 studies (2015–2025), coded into 451 excerpts across nine types of aviation organisation, to ask whether, where, and how sustainability initiatives affect safety. Sustainability initiatives are neither good nor bad for safety in themselves. They improve safety when built into everyday operations and management, through clearer procedures, stronger governance, and better decision support. They harm safety when procedures are immature, infrastructure is not ready, or oversight is weak. Building on this evidence, this paper develops the sustainability–safety nexus, a new framework that treats safety as a core part of sustainability. It rests on Safety-II thinking and four pillars: technology, management commitment, adaptive safety management systems, and international regulatory collaboration. This study translates it into three practical levers, including integrated ESG/CSR–SMS governance, sustainability management of change, and Safety-II learning loops.