Where Birds Don't Fly

The difference between surveillance and oversight is that surveillance is close observation of an enterprise, being airport or airline under suspicion while oversight is something that is left out, missed or forgotten. Surveillance is all activities directly related to evaluating an enterprise's compliance with applicable regulatory requirements including assessments, program validation inspections and process inspections. The regulator does no longer conduct oversight, they do close observations of systems, processes, procedures and work performance activities. A system is a group of inter-dependent processes and personnel working together to achieve a defined result. A system comprises policies, processes and procedures. It is through systems that enterprises should achieve a state of compliance to their regulatory requirements on an on-going basis. Surveillance is to focus on the hazards. T he regulator’s observations are not only of your regulatory compliance, but includes all ...

How often have you asked yourself if inspectors know what they are doing when issuing another finding that they can’t explain. When you ask for the finding reason, they give an answer that make you feel incompetent as an operator, but you are not. Whatever their comments may imply, you are the expert of your operations and the application of SMS. That’s just the way it is. An operator works with Best Practices, which the regulator does not have regulatory authority over. When inspectors tell you that they are there to help you, their help is to lower your self-esteem and operational confidence. When an inspector asks the operator to voluntarily temporary give up their certificate, they will hand it over without asking one single question or object to the request. A certificate is not only your livelihood but also several other families’ livelihood. When you give away your certificate you are giving away your pride in what you and your team have built and accomplished. They demand a tem...

The Safety Management System (SMS) is a tool for both airlines and airports to make money. It’s a tool for the few reasons that SMS is Project Planning, Quality Assurance and Oversight. When SMS was first required by the regulations in Canada, operators were spending ½ - 1 mill dollars to implement. A medium size operator could spend ¾ mill even before phase four had started. This trend continued after SMS was fully implemented, since the operators had been given wrong advice by the regulator how to run the SMS. With help from the regulator micromanaging the SMS, SMS became a mess and a place where no one wanted to be. At the end, operators succumb to the pressure with only one goal in mind to enter a checkmark to whatever checkbox they had to do to for the regulator to accept their operations. SMS tools comes in all sizes, shapes and forms. By now both airlines and airports have operated with an SMS for several years. SMS is running down the same old road where the regulator had guide...