Enhancing Aviation Safety: Expert Insights, Tips, and Updates from SMS-Pro

Hazards Are Dynamic

Aviation safety management systems (SMS) have the objective to:

• proactively manage safety,
• identify potential hazards,
• determine risk, and
• implement measures that mitigate the risk.

Furthermore, an aviation SMS affords operators more opportunities to identify safety issues and spot trends before they result in "The Accident."

What Is Fatigue Risk Management

Fatigue is one of the most important factors in overall operational safety. It’s so important that most aviation safety management systems adopt additional and specific measures to combat fatigue. Fatigue risk management includes:

• Fatigue monitoring;
• Fatigue controls;
• Fatigue data gathering; and

What Is Cybersecurity

The aviation industry relies heavily on computers for every touchpoint of aviation service, from ground to flight operations. Cybersecurity is a term that refers to the safety of such computer systems

Healthy for the Program, Healthy for the SMS Manager

Proactive aviation risk management is an organizational-wide effort towards identifying risk and mitigating hazards before an incident occurs.

For an aviation safety management system (SMS) to get to the point of proactive aviation safety, there will be considerable upfront work required.

Why This Aviation Safety Chart Is Important

Having "real-time" safety charts saves aviation safety managers, executives, and employees a lot of work and keeps them informed of the latest hazards and risks affecting aviation-centric operations.

Having access to real-time safety charts allows management to monitor your SMS program at a glance, rather than having to navigate through your software

What Is Proactive Risk Management

Proactive risk management is often esteemed as the “best” type of risk management. This is because proactive risk management usually matures later in SMS implementation. Also, it involves identifying and stopping issues before they occur.

Despite this, it’s important to understand that proactive risk management is not “better” than reactive or predictive risk management, it is just one necessary strategy for managing risk.

The primary goals of proactive risk management are:

• Identify behaviors that lead to hazard occurrence, and stop it before it happens;
• Identify root causes before they lead to hazard occurrence; and
• Understand the safety “inputs” of your program – i.e., underlying causes that lead to safety performance.

ICAO Requirements for Training and Education

ICAO’s requirements for training and education are largely focused on ensuring that you train and document all employees in your organization on core SMS and safety information. It is specific in its guidance documentation that role-based training is important.

Purpose of Risk Analysis

In aviation SMS, you analyze risk to break an issue down into individual, controllable parts. Based on your analysis, you can assess the safety issue, and understand both what actions need to be taken, and what safety factors need to be better controlled.

Knowing Who Is Involved in Your Aviation SMS

For every aviation safety management system (SMS), the accountable executive must ensure the SMS is properly implemented and performing in all areas of the organization.

Environment Always Changes

Change is an inevitable and constant reality in the aviation industry. A lack of change is tantamount to a lack of growth in an economy.

Likewise, if your aviation safety management system (SMS) is not changing, it’s not improving. "Continuous improvement of the SMS" is the third element of the "Safety Assurance" pillar of ICAO-compliant SMS.