Where Birds Don't Fly

The Accountable Executive (AE) at your amazing Airport or Airline has broader powers given to them by the Safety Management System (SMS) Regulations than what is required of them to make sound business decisions as the CEO. However, the AE’s ultimate powers are limited to the operational comprehension levels of  aviation safety inspectors or auditors. Decision powers are not limited in scope, but in options, availability, flexibility and applicability to size and complexity. Operating a successful SMS under these conditions becomes a challenge for the AE to balance the field length with sound business judgments.  A Safety Management System is your goal setting plan. Conventional wisdom of a process it that what comes out of a process is equal to the quality of inputs. However, within an SMS organization the outcome of processes is strongly depends on special cause variables as inputs, or also defined as human factors, organizational factors, supervision factors or environmenta...

I have a goal of zero incidents at My Amazing Airport or Airline. The regulator has a goal of zero incidents at an airport. An incident triggers a reactive inspection by the regulator, which is an inspection of what occurred in the past and how the airport emergency plan managed the incident. As longs as both the regulator and operator have a common goal of zero incidents life is good. However, if there is a runway excursion by any aircraft operator, the airport is in breach of contract.  You may have heard that when you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either. Many lives by a philosophy dreaming about unattainable wishes to navigate through disappointments. They avoid setting goals and goal-achievement plans. Taking the path of least resistance is human nature. Reaching for the starts is much more reliable process than setting a goal to read one book a month. If it didn’t happen you always have away out that at least you tr...