Where Birds Don't Fly

Conventional wisdom of how to audit the Safety Management System (SMS) is to generate an audit checklist based on regulatory requirements for an SMS, and develop expectations, or processes, in a checklist form to determine level of regulatory compliance. There are several itemized expectations for an SMS enterprise to audit every single aspect of operations for compliance. Auditing by expectations does not paint a true picture of an SMS enterprise level of compliance since an expectation audit does not audit for reliability.  An airline or airport may be required to comply with hundreds of regulations in addition to just as many operational standards. One regulation may be compliant by applying several different operational methods, or expectations, which may be interpreted differently by inspectors, auditors or organizational management. When expectations are applied to an SMS audit, all operators are grouped into one expectation and that one-fits-all. Auditing by expectations is a ha