An international call for airlines to have safety management systems in place by January 2009 will probably not be met in the USA as the Federal Aviation Administration and other stakeholders attempt to perfect how the tools are used in practice.
The agency this week is holding a safety conference largely to gather lessons learned and best practices from the international aviation community to further its effort to define standards for proactive safety programmes that help airlines identify hazards, mitigate risks and monitor how well intervention strategies are working.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation in 2004 and 2006 published standards and recommendations for implementing safety management systems at airports and air traffic control organisations, respectively, and plans to do the same for member nation airlines in January 2009, says Tony Ferrante, director of the FAA's air traffic safety oversight service.
Ferrante says the FAA's internal safety management system for its air traffic organisation, the most mature safety management system programme within the agency, started in 2005 and will be "fully implemented" in 2010.
Jay Pardee, head of the FAA's Aviation Safety Analytical Unit, says officials have tested the safety management system concept as part of six projects, including construction of tall towers, the design of a required navigation performance approach into Washington Reagan National airport and a departure procedure for Las Vegas airport.
The FAA recently launched pilot safety management system programmes at six US airlines in an attempt to advance information published as part of an advisory circular on the topic in June 2006.
Pardee says the tests, designed to provide information on how safety management systems can be applied to both "large complex" carriers and small operators, will possibly last for one year, after which the agency could update the advisory circular or propose a rule.
"We're fine tuning," he says, "though it's in a pretty mature state right now." Lessons learned from the international community aired at this week's conference, he adds, will be used to "figure out how to deploy safety management systems."
More immediate pressure for action on safety management systems is coming from the National Transportation Safety Board, which called for the FAA to mandate them at all Part 121 airlines in the aftermath of the 2004 Pinnacle Airlines Bombardier CRJ accident in Jefferson City, Missouri.
The crash killed both pilots on the repositioning flight, but no-one on the ground. Although the NTSB blamed the pilots' unprofessional behaviour, failure to follow standard operating procedures and other factors for the crash, officials highlighted the broader problem of airlines not having insight into an eroding safety culture within the ranks.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
