28 February 2005: updated address added on 15/04/2005) It is herewith my pleasure to confirm last year's announcement that the 2005 Europe/US International Aviation Safety Conference will be held in Cologne, Germany, from June 7 to 9, 2005.

This will be the first time that the conference, co-chaired by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is being hosted by the Agency, and we are currently putting together what promises to be an exciting agenda.

The conference will be held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel Cologne, and although I cannot at this stage reveal the nature of the conference topics to be addressed, we are nonetheless launching the conference website to give some initial information concerning the hotel arrangements for the conference, as well as some general information about the city of Cologne.

In this context, I would like to inform you of an important change in the format of the conference. In order to align ourselves with the general trend for this kind of event, we have decided to make it a paperless conference. In essence this means that the conference binders that have been a habitual feature of past conferences will not be prepared, and all conference documentation and presentations should be downloaded from the conference website as and when they become available.

I would, however, also like to take this opportunity to make a further announcement concerning this year's conference. It is with regret that I have to announce that we are having to limit the number of participants to this year's conference to 300 due to venue limitations. This will have to be managed on a first-come-first-served basis, and as we are in the final stages of making the arrangements to allow for conference registration, I would therefore encourage you monitor the website for further developments in this regard.

As the conference continues to take shape over the next weeks and months, I trust that we can make up for some of our shortcomings in preparing for this event, and that the enthusiasm that has prevailed at past conferences will also be demonstrated at this occasion. I will look forward to welcoming you in Cologne.

Sincerely,

Patrick Goudou
Executive Director