If you ask most aviation professionals whether their airline has a safety management system (SMS), the answer will be a confident yes; but, if you ask them why it exists and who it’s really for, the answer might be less certain. Reflecting on this paradox, some uncomfortable truths emerge from across the industry.
At Safewings we see many of examples where the SMS has become more about satisfying the regulator requirement than it does about protecting an organisation’s people and the passengers that the aviation system serves. Many safety reports get filed, but the root causes never [very rarely] see daylight. Similarly, risk assessments tick all the boxes but change nothing. Alarmingly, organisations appear siloed, never stopping to think about the interfaces with other parts of the aviation system.
It’s simply not enough to have a management system; as individuals, organisations and an industry, we need to know the purpose of our respective SMSs and be focused on discussing and managing the risks we face to an acceptable level.
The Pitfalls We Must Avoid
From discussions with industry experts, several common problems emerge in how we actually do things as organisations and what this means for our organisational culture:
Fear of Speaking Up. Without legal protection and trust, staff can be reluctant to report events or near misses. Could this reluctance be masking trends and risks?
Transactional, Not Transformational. Changes are often prompted by regulatory and/or commercial drivers instead of being proactive actions to reduce identified risk(s).
Production Over Protection. Operational performance metrics can dominate daily decisions, but could that be at the expense of safety. ”The numbers”, outputs, deliverables, throughput… call them what you will, but operational performance metrics can often dominate daily decisions. Could pursuit of the numbers reduce adherence to protocols?
Normalisation of Deviation. Risks we’d never accept in theory can become tolerated in practice - until the buffer is gone. Could undue pressure be driving the wrong behaviours>
Hubris and Complacency. Past safety success can lead to overconfidence and reluctance to challenge the status quo. Could complacency be masking another problem?
The Illusion of Safety. Whilst SMS processes exist on paper, their impact in real world scenarios can be minimal without sufficient safety barriers, cross-checks and the ability for individuals to challenge and be challenged.
What a Purpose-driven SMS Looks Like
A strong, purposeful SMS must always do the following:
Integrate with daily operations and engage all staff rather than sitting on a shelf for audit season.
Focus on identifying lessons to benefit future activities, not apportion blame. Learning, documenting and discussing the how and why of a system failure is more important than identifying who might have made the error.
Support an open and just culture, in turn, encouraging the team to speak up without fear of career or reputational harm.
Make risk tolerance visible: when everyone knows where the real boundaries lie, the risk of transgression can be reduced.
Use data wisely, going beyond basic performance indicators to measure and act on operational safety precursors. Similarly, showing the organisation how the data is being used promotes a greater understanding of why that data is being captured.
Be reviewed regularly, not only incorporating received feedback, but also the direct input from all parts and levels of the organisation not just the safety team and the executive
Safety Pillars Summary
🧠 Mindset
A management system is a tool for safety improvement, not a compliance trophy. Each report and risk assessment is an opportunity to learn, but it’s also important to be proactive and look for risks in your operation. Identifying, discussing and reporting risk is an opportunity to promote that activity and make the operation safer.
👥 People
Staff engagement is essential. A reporting culture built on trust will always outperform a fear-driven one. Operational staff make safety decisions every day, the safety team should support that and not be totally separated from their reality.
⚙️ Equipment
Make sure that the systems and tools you use to support your management system are easy to use, accessible and fit the operational environment, especially when it comes to reporting. Don’t forget to have and actively promote a feedback loop.
📋 Compliance
Meeting regulatory requirements is the baseline - not the goal. We measure success by reducing and mitigating risk, not by completing paperwork or using the right words without understanding what value they bring to the safety of individuals, the operation and/or the wider system.
⚠️ Risks
A hollow SMS creates false confidence, hides emerging threats and misses opportunities to intervene before incidents occur. Where risks interface with other organisations, embrace open discussion - Just Culture applies equally between organisations (…including regulators).
📚 Learning
If we’re not analysing weak signals from normal operations, we’re only learning from rare events - and that’s often too little, too late. These weak signals include the things we do well.
Final Word
Effective safety management is about ensuring everything is in place to keep people safe. It is not solely a reactive activity (Safety I) or solely a proactive activity (Safety II) - but simply “safety” that mixes elements of both.
A management system with purpose mustn’t just exist - it must work. The best management systems connect strategy with the frontline, turn reports into actionable change and keep the organisation’s safety ahead of the curve. In the winter season, when operational pressures and environmental hazards peak, it’s not the illusion of safety that will protect us - it’s the reality of a living, breathing SMS.
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