Where Birds Don't Fly

The Safety Management System (SMS) in aviation is has since its infancy taken many twists and turns to find a path forward. SMS started out as an idea of how aviation should manage safety and for the system to be integrated into a functional safety system in the operations. Prior to SMS safety was managed by the “safety card”, or an opinion-based safety solution process. With this in mind, the onset of SMS forced airlines and airport operators to revamp their safety structure and change their approach to safety 180 degrees.  This new approach caused conflicts and confusion and the path of least resistance was to reject the new Safety Management System. Rejection became apparent in news articles about how SMS had failed safety and surveys were tailored to show this. However, over a short time SMS grew enough roots to resist being pulled out and it grew stronger. One lesson the aviation industry learned quickly about SMS was that it could not fail since it was a mirror of their opera...

Complacency is a human behavior hazardous to aviation safety. Complacency has become the new root cause for accidents and replaced pilot error. It is conventional wisdom that complacency is caused by the very things that should prevent accidents, factors like experience, training and knowledge contribute to complacency. Complacency makes crews skip hurriedly through checklists, fail to monitor instruments closely or utilize all navigational aids. It can cause a crew to use shortcuts and poor judgement and to resort to other malpractices that mean the difference between hazardous performance and professional performance. Complacency is also given as the reason when things go wrong flying the same route daily or doing the same job regularly. Complacency has just become another word for pilot error. However, this is all wrong. Complacency is not caused by experience, training, or knowledge. Complacency is all about organizational factor.  When conducting a root cause analysis within a...