US FAA administrator Randy Babbitt is urging maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) firms to formally adopt safety management systems, saying SMSs will play a key role in enhancing the industry's safety culture.
But some industry stakeholders have vocalized concerns about shouldering the cost of implementing SMS.
A non-punitive safety reporting system, SMS allows employees to report problems or errors without fear of retribution. "We're already working with the pilots, we're working with mechanics, flight attendants, dispatchers and our air traffic controllers. All of them now have self-reporting programmes, and they're working," said Babbitt last week at the Aviation Week MRO Americas conference in Miami.
"We're getting thousands and thousands of data slices that we would never get. We would never ever get. People would simply hide them for fear of being punished. For fear of retribution. We take that away. I don't care [who reported]. I just want to know the data. I want to know what happened. You want to know what happened. You can't fix things you don't know are broken and so that's why we take a fairly aggressive approach in this."
With this data, the FAA is hoping to shift from a system that in the past relied on the use of forensics to understand what happened in an aircraft accident to one that uses computer analysis and trends to help the agency make decisions to stop accidents before they happen.
Last fall, the FAA released a proposed rule that imposes SMS implementation on most airlines. The public comment period for the proposal closed on 7 March of this year. The agency also recently made a proposal that airports adopt SMS on ramp areas and access areas on airfields. Public comments will be accepted until 5 July.
But Babbitt says he'd "like to see more companies, and airports move toward SMS, and eventually MROs".
Because most airlines already have quality control and quality assurance programmes in place, SMS "simply formalizes those processes", notes Babbitt, who admits he is accustomed to hearing questions about whether adopting SMS will cost the industry more money.
"I would remind all of us that SMS is considerably less expensive than an accident and so together we have to make this shift," says Babbitt. "SMS is essentially a feedback, if you think about it, it's not all that complicated. You have a way of understanding and collecting the data. You identify the problem, you analyse it, mitigate it, you design the procedure and training of the new procedure and then you implement it, and then you continue to monitor the data and see did that fix the problem. It's really a fairly simple system, and gives you continuous feedback [on how you're doing]."
Many Part 145 repair stations already have SMSs in place. "However, those systems have not spread the responsibility for safety throughout all levels of the organization. Rather, they have been confined to audits or checklists in areas where a large number of accidents or incidents have occurred," notes Curt Lewis & Associates, a consultancy that specializes in assisting with SMS implementation.
During the conference, Aeronautical Repair Stations Association executive director Sarah MacLeod said industry is already a step ahead of regulators: "Governments don't lead the industry. The industry leads government. And if you don't believe that, then boy this is really the wrong industry to be in because they are way behind us. Did you drink the Kool-Aid this morning with Randy [Babbitt]? The government is going to tell us how much money we're going to save with this new system that they are going to make us pay for. What the? We need to start passing out Kool-Aid at all these things. The SMS Kool-Aid. The NextGen Kool-Aid," said MacLeod.
Babbitt says the "central element" to a good SMS is the employee who feels comfortable enough to willingly report safety hazards. "When you have your employees doing that, you will have achieved a safety culture," he says.
But he warns that the system will never be perfect. "We'll never be safe enough. We'll never get to zero," he says, adding: "But we'll always be trying."
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
