Shelby Balogh collects 2024 Safety Standdown Award

Bombardier’s 28th annual Safety Standdown event was held in Wichita, Kansas, from Nov. 12-14, 2024, attracting close to 400 in-person aviation professionals and several hundred virtually – all of them dedicated to improving aviation safety. 

The aviation safety star of the event was Shelby Balogh, a Principal Analytics Engineer and Data Science Safety Leader at GE Aerospace, who was presented with the 2024 Bombardier Safety Standdown Award during the Nov. 13 banquet. The annual award goes to an aviation professional who has shown exemplary dedication to improving industry safety through the three key Safety Standdown principles of “Learn, Apply, Share.”   

A resident of Austin, TX, Balogh was nominated by the Northeast Safety Roundtable, a group of business aviation professionals who collaborate to improve safety across their operations. In addition to working with the roundtable, Balogh also serves on the NBAA Safety Council, co-chairs the ICAO/CAST FDM Common Taxonomy Team, and presents at safety seminars and conferences.  

At GE Aerospace, Balogh has led the Corporate Flight Operations Quality Assurance (C-FOQA) program since 2015. While completing his Master of Science in Aviation at the University of North Dakota, his thesis research focused on a way to use FOQA data to identify general aviation flights with an elevated risk for loss of control in-flight. His research was later incorporated into FAA safety programs.  

Balogh also co-authored the textbook Aerodynamics for Aviators. 

Bombardier congratulates Shelby Balogh, recipient of the 2024 Safety Standdown Award, for his dedication to understanding aviation safety data and subsequently sharing his learnings to benefit our professional community.