Where Birds Don't Fly

A role for an accountable executive (AE) are to review their safety management system (SMS) and determine their SMS deviation from its planned course and path. A fully functional SMS cannot fail since it paints a true picture of operations, and any deviations from the path come from operational drift. An SMS enterprise operate with processes for conducting reviews or audits of their safety management system at regular intervals, and reviews or audits for cause or on-demand, of the safety management system when there are planned deviations from their current SMS. In addition to reviews and audits of deviations, an SMS enterprise operates with processes for reviewing the safety management system to determine its effectiveness. The first step to determine an SMS effectiveness is to determine what an effective SMS looks like.  There are several views of what an effective safety management system should look like, and one effective SMS may be different for one organization to another. E...

Two owners of a safety management system (SMS) are flight operations and airport operations. In their own area of operations, they are the hazard owners and hands-on process control managers. With the implementation of SMS operational safety was moved away from the safety manager’s office and to areas of operations where they belong. In addition to social media opinions, there are still aviation managers who believe that a safety manger’s role is to keep everyone safe, it is their role to establish acceptable risk levels, and that it their role to overrule operations mangers and airport mangers if a safety manager decided a decision to be unsafe.  A safety management system is about processes and daily work practices. The final authority for risk acceptance is the accountable executive (AE). It is important to know that an SMS is not the magic wand that prevents future accidents from happening but is a tool to lay out the path for success. The first task on this path is to develop ...