The Need for Safety Management Systems

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Air Transport Association (ATA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) held its 4th Annual International Aviation Safety Forum outside Washington, DC, Nov. 28-30, at which participants from around the world pledged to implement Safety Management...

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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Air Transport Association (ATA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) held its 4th Annual International Aviation Safety Forum outside Washington, DC, Nov. 28-30, at which participants from around the world pledged to implement Safety Management Systems, a systematic approach to managing risks associated with commercial aviation. The session was covered by VLJ Report’s sister publication Air Safety Week.
Acting Federal Aviation Administrator Robert Sturgell said: "the question for us in aviation is how to maintain the safety record that's the envy of all transportation. How are we going to raise the bar? The answer is SMS -- safety management systems. Aviation no longer is in the business of combing through ashes and wreckage to find answers. SMS will give us the intelligence we need before the problem reaches the headlines. When it comes to risks, the low-hanging fruit is long gone. SMS uses hard data to point us in the direction we need to go. We don't have to wait for something bad to happen.Ultimately, we don't want to just meet ICAO minimums. Ultimately, our goal is to raise the bar worldwide no matter where you go.
"At its most fundamental level, a safety management system helps organizations identify and manage risk,” he continued. “It is based on hard data. Safety management systems help us manage risk far better than we have, because it's a disciplined and standardized approach to managing risk. At the very core of the SMS is the need to identify potential hazards and then analyze risk. After that, the next steps are to rank hazards and assess risk, and then identify mitigation options. It's a closed-loop process where identified risks are mitigated and the mitigations are monitored to provide continuous system safety."
He said the FAA's recent Call to Action for runway safety is an example of using SMS principles. A string of events pointed to a problem with U.S. runways. They involved a variety of factors – miscommunications, missed turns on taxiways, a snowplow, missed turns onto an active runway, signage.
"When we issued our Call to Action, we looked at 5.4 million records covering a 20-year period,” he said. “We found 117 isolated instances of flight crew confusion here in the United States involving a variety of issues. Our Call to Action is addressing these issues as we speak. Short-term action such as enhancing runway markings and improving pilot training are already under way.”