How Safe is Too Safe?

           As a response to the crash in 2009 of a Colgan flight near Buffalo, the US Congress passed a bill called the “Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010”. The Colgan crash was characterized by “rookie” mistakes made by grossly inexperienced pilots. The intent behind the congressional act is to outline updated requirements for both the FAA and airline pilots to ensure that similar accidents do not occur. The proposed requirements encompass a wide variety of changes including pilot service record keeping systems, FAA inspection type and frequency updates, professional development training for pilots, requirements for the development and implementation of safety managements systems (SMS), and increased flight and duty restrictions for commercial airline pilots (US Congress , 2010). As an aviation management student who is particularly interested in industry safety, I can see the implementation of required safety management systems potentially affecting my career and my learning institution’s future greatly.

            Safety management systems are an approach to the management of safety that is comprehensive and systemic in nature. SMS has developed from the understanding that safety management can only be as successful as upper management officials within an organization will allow it to be, through funding and the utilization of time and resources. Safety management requires money that the return on which is difficult to identify and is, accordingly, often not a top priority for board members and CEOs until there has been a safety breach. The proposed requirement of the adoption of safety management systems includes a measure that will hold upper level managers financially and criminally responsible for safety related negligence (Federal Aviation Administration, 2010). This measure will undoubtedly get the attention of industry managers, and will likely add some of the necessary motivation to actively oversee these programs. How implementing SMS industry wide could affect my and other future aviation manager’s careers is potentially great.

            SMS is made up of four key components including formal hazard identification methods, risk assessment guidelines, program assessment metrics, and the promotion of corporate safety culture (Federal Aviation Administration, 2010). Many current part 121 operators are using most of these methods in their current safety programs. However, these current programs are often run and evaluated separately. SMS requires that all programs are run and evaluated as a complex system. This systematic approach will require current aviation managers get specialized training. Fortunately, for me and other current students of aviation management some part 141 schools have already implemented SMS classes as part of the required curriculum. We have an advantage over current managers because we have not been managing safety systems a different way for many years, as they have. In addition, college-level training courses often allow more time to study and learn a given topic, compared to training workshops that industry professionals often have to accomplish on top of their current duties. Current students will likely graduate with an increased value to potential employers than those of the past. This value may come at a cost to educational institutions, though.

            The FAA has classically identified needs in the aviation industry, and created regulatory requirements accordingly. The regulation of aviation management has historically been minimal. There have regularly been manuals developed for outlining how a program should be developed and run by aviation managers, yet specified training has been kept to a minimum. As the prevalence of management requirements increases, such as adoption of SMS, there could likely be closer regulation relating to training required for aviation managers. This could result in educational institutions having to hire new staff members and make comprehensive changes to curriculum. Though these costs would likely pale in comparison to the expanded pilot training requirement costs, they will be new costs to an already cash strapped educational system.

            The proposed changes encompassed in the congressional act are sweeping, comprehensive, and will likely be very costly. Though the act states that it is a response to the Colgan crash in Buffalo, it is really in response to the findings of the subsequent NTSB investigation. This investigation resulted in the identification of many unsatisfactorily unsafe conditions throughout the aviation industry. Though no one proposed change was unanimously agreed upon by the experts involved in researching the benefits of their implementation, nearly all of them were agreed upon by the majority of the experts. When deciding if costly changes to the aviation system are worth their effort, one has to consider the cost of not making the changes. In this case, the cost could likely be the deaths of many people that we will suspect could have been avoided.     

References

Administration Federal Aviation. (2012, February 29). Pilot Certification and Qualification Requirements for Air Carrier Operations. Retrieved January 25, 2013, from gpo.gov: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-02-29/pdf/2012-4627.pdf

Federal Aviation Administration. (2010, October 29). Safety Management Systems: Proposed Requirements. Retrieved January 25, 2013, from faa.gov: http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/afs/afs900/sms/media/newsletter/nprm_reg_text.pdf

US Congress . (2010, August 1). Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Expansion Act of 2010. Retrieved January 25, 2013, from gpo.gov: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ216/pdf/PLAW-111publ216.pdf