Where Birds Don't Fly

The very first step of an effective Safety Management System (SMS) is for management to review and document intent, or documentation of regulatory compliance, the second part is to perform a Quality Assurance (QA) of operational processes to discover degree of processes regulatory compliance, with the following step to perform a QA to discover degree of safe operational processes. The regulatory requirements is the first item on agenda, since without being regulatory compliance, operational criteria do not exists. Before any operational process are established, the enterprise is in a static-state of regulatory compliance.  A hazardous operational condition begins to exists at the split-second of aircraft movement and an airport becomes operational.  Unless managed, this is a hazardous condition which could lead to an incident. Hazardous conditions exists at the moment an aircraft is operational. When standards are changed, either in flight operations or airport, it becomes ess...

In an SMS world, when an enterprise is assessed for effectiveness without applying Statistical Process Control (SPC), or in other words, when it is the subjective opinion of an assessor that is applied to evaluation of collected data, the assessment has only a subjective impact of the outcome of processes. Applying assessments with the "gut feelings" tool and not SPC, is ineffective assessment.  Assessment is the evaluation, or estimation of the nature, or ability of a Safety Management System to function within an organization.  There are two portions to an SMS System; the regulatory portion and the operational portion. Regulatory requirements are not estimations or abilities, but documentation put in place by an enterprise of systems which are showing their intent to conform to regulatory requirements. The operational portion is management of interconnected systems to operationally, in a changing environment, be capable of maintaining regulatory compliance by the intent pro...

This month is 15 years ago sine the Singapore Airlines Flight 006 accident happen at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, Taipei, Taiwan. The airplane lined up and initiated takeoff on parallel runway under construction, and it was barricaded. It was raining, windy, dark and Typhoon was moving in, with gust up to 50 KTS, to the point of almost exceeding aircraft maximum crosswind component. The Captain became the face of the systems which to blame. In a non SMS World the systems are concealed to show only the face.  When they just come and talk to you is when there is no Safety Management System in place and airport, air-traffic controllers and pilots are operating in a virtual world of perfect operations. In this virtual world there is no accountability and hazards are not communicated, but ignored. They just come and talk to you where words and sentences of verbal instructions becomes singularized operational standards. Flight 006 was cleared for takeoff on RWY 05L, but ended u...