Safety Management Systems In The Aviation Industry

There are many aircraft accident factors in which investigators need to pursue in order to come to a good conclusion on what the cause or causes of an aircraft accident were. A portion of what the investigator looks into is the human factors surrounding the accident. This highly diverse and expansive area needs to be systematically looked into to figure out if any human factors were causation of an aircraft accident. One model that investigators utilize in order to sift through the human factors that may be attributable to an accident is the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) Model. This Model breaks down human factors into four different sections, organizational influences, unsafe supervision, preconditions for unsafe acts, and unsafe acts of operators. Throughout this case study, the accident of American Airlines flight 1420 will be dissected utilizing the HFACS Model to uncover human factors issues with the aircraft operator organization, aircraft flight crew, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The student will investigate, compare, contrast, analyze and form conclusions to current aviation, aerospace, and industry-related topics in safety systems, including systems safety, industrial safety, accident investigation and analysis, transportation security, airport safety and certification, safety program management, and aviation psychology.

A safety management system is a businesslike approach to safety. It is a systematic, precise and proactive process for managing safety risks. As with all management systems, a safety management system provides for goal setting, planning, and measuring performance. This is approached in Safety Policy which is one of the most important components of Safety Management System (SMS). Safety policy deals with the structure and outline of implementation of safe operations. Within other elements, the safety policy includes planning, organizing, compliance with regulations and low, documentation, and emergency preparedness and response. It is the level which upper level management must buy in and constantly assist the SMS. In the absence of management buy in and assistance, the failure of SMS is inevitable. Since employees are affected by the behavior of management, it is highly expected to observe deliberately not obeying the rules or ignoring policy which are an emulation of the management behavior. I also should not overlook to the fact that top management demonstrates the way people do their jobs because managers are the role model for all the employees in organization. From the top to the bottom, managers ‘attitudes and actions will be copied. And, employees will make managers’ beliefs and actions their own. That is why top management support is crucial for an effective SMS.

The aviation community has to constantly keep innovating to help ease congestion in the air space, and keep passengers safe. The implementation of the airport modernization act has continued to aid the aviation industry, and as a result we have seen improvement in technology, and airport operations. Human error has continue to be an issue in the aviation industry, as noted by the author in How Traffic Control Keeps you Safe, but airlines still has some of the best safety records amongst the modes of transportation. The article gave great example of the current issues in the aviation industry, and how they are using technology to their advantage to help lesson these risk. There is always going to be accidents in the aviation industry, but taking right steps to make sure that numbers of mistakes are slim to none is something that will help aid to the growth of the

It has been said that one can’t fix a problem if they didn’t know that it existed. The Federal Aviation Administration has to be credited in improving safety in a multitude of ways. The best way to do that is transform safety program from being retroactive to proactive. One of the well-received programs that FAA has created is the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP). This program works to the benefit of every airman, as well of most aviation organizations. This program emphasizes why things happen and what can be done to correct it. Parts 121 & 145 environments of the aviation industry have been positively affected by the introduction of the Aviation Safety Action Program. Today, 98 operators have 231 programs covering pilots, mechanics, flight attendants, and dispatchers (Fact Sheet – Aviation Voluntary Reporting Programs, 2013).

Having a safety professional within the organization assist with the development of a health and safety protection plan, used by the organization, to create safety measures in conformity to standard guidelines OSHA. The criticality of strong safety leadership within an organization creates a circle for safety minimizing the possibilities of losses through health programs. This is to mean that when safety leadership is strong within the organization, output of staffs increases because they realize that their lives are held at high esteem. Subsequently, this leads to efficiency in their practice through the understanding created by the safety leader. Through this discussion, the focus will be on the advantages, of having a strongly, led safety department within an organization, and how it helps in the setting up of health programs to reduce losses.

The assigned readings for Unit 2 (Chapters 2, 3 and 6) cover the effects of workplace accidents, accident theories, and workers’ compensation. In professional safety practice, the topics covered in this unit generally include a discussion of “safety metrics”. Measuring safety performance is a mixed bag of calculating and reviewing data associated with “lagging indicators” and “leading indicators”. By definition, lagging indicators are “output” oriented, easy to measure and calculate, but not improvable since they are measures of what already occurred (i.e., losses in the form of accidents, property damage, or loss of life). In contrast, leading indicators are “input” oriented and represent preventative measures taken to improve overall safety and reduce the occurrence of incidents and injuries.

This document has been developed by Aerosafe Risk Management (Aerosafe) in reponse to a specific body of work that was commissioned by the Offshore Helicopter Safety Inquiry. The background intellectual property expressed through the methodologies, models, copyright, patent and trade secrets used to produce the Offhore Helicopter Safety Inquiry Overview of best practice in Organizational & Safety Culture remains the property of Aerosafe.

This model was also successful in limiting relatively simple type of incidents. The result of the research around human behaviour in an organisational context reveals that 88% of accidents are due to unsafe work behaviours. However, this result emphasise that strategic program should include data gathered from other field, such as industrial and organisational behaviour for promoting safety culture within the system. In addition, as there is only a single triggering factor that leads to an accident, it is rather more straightforward to control and prevent the cause or impose recommendation (Health and Safety Professional Alliance,2012).

A comprehensive safety culture present at all levels within an organization, with transparent and dependable leadership can make a significant contribution to the Defense-in-Depth principal. This can promote the vigilance necessary to recognize both the potential and/or actual safety issues as well as the dedication and communication required to address them.

Prior to 1959, faulty equipment was the probable cause for many airplane accidents, but with the advent of jet engines, faulty equipment became less of a threat, while human factors gained prominence in accident investigations (Kanki, Helmreich & Anca, 2010). From 1959 to 1989, pilot error was the cause of 70% of accident resulting in the loss of hull worldwide (Kanki, Helmreich & Anca, 2010). Due to these alarming statistics, in 1979 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) implemented a workshop called “Resource Management on the Flightdeck” that led to what is now known as Crew Resource Management (CRM) or also known as Cockpit Resource Management (Rodrigues & Cusick, 2012). CRM is a concept that has been attributed

Traveling in air is a dangerous task that’s why aircraft engineers have been researching ways to improve security in airlines. Technological advances have resulted in automated cockpit procedures to make up for the human errors that usually occur (2000). Sixty eight percent of crashes are attributed to human error. This may include error during aircraft design, manufacturing, maintenance, or installation. Security breaches that result in terrorist activities can also be attributed to human error. This is the reason why technological innovations in safety are important in the airlines industry. Other technological factors include Customer Relation Management in the Internet.

In several studies of aviation mishaps, human error has been cited as the primary cause of the majority of these mishaps. The main problems of these human errors were failures in interpersonal communication, leadership, and decision making in the flight deck (or cockpit). With this in mind and the need to improve on air safety, Crew Resource Management was developed. We will define CRM and then continue further to define subsequent automations and questionnaires that have developed through CRM. We will discuss the importance of CRM, automations, and questionnaires and the research findings.

Numerous events have occurred over time in industry. Some of these events have paved the way for safe activities in today’s industry. One such event is the Flixborough Disaster. My objective in this paper is to analyze the Flixborough Disaster as a system and the impact of process safety management on industry safety.

This paper examines the plane crash of a Cessna Citation 550 which impacted into lake Michigan shortly after takeoff. We will examine the flight crew involved, flight information, crash details, and the accident investigations about the crash. On further analyzing crashes like this one, we should have a better understanding on how CRM (crew resource management) and good flight practices can make flights safer.