SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

Common Safety Manager Challenges in Aviation SMS Programs

Safety managers face difficult challenges when complying with the ICAO aviation safety management systems (SMS) requirements. Most airlines and airports around the world understand that they have to implement these SMS requirements.

In many parts of the world, aviation safety managers commonly lack:

• Clear guidance to implement aviation SMS;
• Earnest participation by the entire organization; and

Proactive Risk Management a Dream for Many Aviation Safety Programs

Historically, aviation safety management strategies relied predominantly upon reactive risk management principles. For example, a critical part would break or an accident occurred, and managers would then attempt to determine the root cause and fix the issue.

In a perfect world, aviation service providers will lean toward a more modern proactive, organizational-based methodology to avert serious accidents before they occur. By looking at Boeing stats, commercial traffic is very safe, with greater than 99.999% accident-free rate.

What Are Best Practices for Risk Mitigation in Aviation Safety Management

The term risk mitigation, broadly speaking, means to try and prevent danger. You might think of it as “reducing exposure.” In general, there are four best practices employed in aviation SMS to mitigate risk, and they include:

• Risk Avoidance;
• Risk Transference;
• Risk Segmentation; and
• Risk Likelihood Reduction.

What Are Risk Management Tools

Risk management tools in aviation SMS is simply a vague term that refers to resources that can help you manage risk. Often, the most beneficial resources tend to be simple, inexpensive, and helpful for both providing guidance and helping you organize your time.

By “simple tools” we are talking about risk management tools like:

• Checklists;
• Templates;

Why Review Safety Risk Management Procedures?

Aviation safety managers come and go. At the most volatile organizations, we see safety managers change every six months to a year.

The reasons safety managers leave their positions include:

• Promotions;
• Demotions (usually from poor safety audit results);
• Voluntary resignation (overworked, lack of management support); and

What Is Safety Performance Monitoring in Aviation SMS

Safety performance monitoring in aviation SMS is the primary way you will assess your safety program. This assessment happens in two different ways:

• Passively, such as in the case of high, system-level performance monitoring, such as trend identification; and

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 Does Being an Aviation Safety Manager Mean?

Aviation safety managers are responsible for the development, operation, and continuous improvement of our world's aviation safety management systems (SMS). Safety managers facilitate the management of all safety-related issues according to ICAO's requirements following the four pillars:

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.

Resistance to Aviation SMS

Considerable numbers of aviation managers in the United States and a few other countries groaned when ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) mandated that most aviation service providers implement formal aviation safety management systems (SMS).

Americans, by nature, are rebellious against government involvement in commercial activities.