Where Birds Don't Fly

Human factors and human errors are two separate things but are often used interchangeable in conversations and in the aviation industry. Human errors are attached to a person who could be linked to an occurrence. In addition, the severity of the outcome is a predetermining factor how important it is to assign human error as the root cause after an accident.  Human error root cause analysis has widespread support from the aviation industry. However, with the implementation of the Safety Management System (SMS) regulations, accountability came into play, and it became impossible to justify human error as the root cause.  A healthy SMS looks at the organization and its systems, and the fact that a person overlooked, or missed an item is no longer a root cause, such as a pilot missing a checklist item. Checklists are required and are used for any flight, but there is no evidence a missed checklist item was the root cause of any accidents. At the other end of the spectrum, completi...

Regulatory conforming processes are processes producing outputs that conform to regulatory requirements. There are three fundamental tasks required when building regulatory performing processes. The first task is the research for input task, the second task is the process design and development task, and the third is the regulatory identification and assignment task. A process must be linked to one regulatory requirement. In a healthy SMS environment, a process is linked to several regulations, or several standards, and to the SMS policy.  The research for input task is a comprehensive research of regulatory requirements for airport or airline operations. In addition to airport or airline regulations, multiple other federal or local regulations may be applicable, such as environment regulation, transportation of the public regulations, and other regulations. However, when researching regulatory requirements for the purpose of building a conforming process, only airport or airline o...