Safety in Business Administration
Having one of the most complex airspace systems in the world, the US is also one of the safest. The FAA has taken a formal approach to safety, moving away from the ‘Safety is just a slogan’ mentality. One tool used by many organizations is the Safety Management System (SMS). SMS is the formal, top-down, organization-wide approach to managing safety risk and assuring the effectiveness of safety risk controls¹. This systematic and business-like approach allows organizations as a whole to be actively engaged in safety policies, procedures and risk management.
While every major airline in the US has adapted SMS, many private charter companies have not. There are different organizations who have set the benchmark in safety certification, and also provide training and implementation for Part 135 operators. IS-BAO, WYVERN and ARGUS are the primary organizations that do this, and each has varying levels of certification.
IS-BAO, the International Standard for Business Aircraft Operations, is the globally recognized voluntary safety standard. IS-BAO is specifically formulated for business aviation and accepted worldwide as the benchmark for safety and efficiency in business aircraft operations⁴.
Basic research shows that private charter flights are generally as safe as airline travel. However, a majority of accidents that take place in the Part 135 world are due to pilot error². Hazardous attitudes are a major contributing factor when pilot error has been found to be the root cause of an accident.
Let’s look at this scenario:
A Part 135 operator is asked to pick up passengers at an airport they are not familiar with. Thunderstorms are moving in and the pilots decide it is safer to wait on the ground and let the thunderstorms pass. The passengers are eager to get to their destination and complain to the pilots. There are several remarks made about how they will get ‘real pilots’ to fly them and threats to ‘call their boss and have them fired’. The pilots give in to the passenger requests, depart into a thunderstorm and subsequently crash due to strong winds.
This scenario, including weather factors, impatient passengers and threats to their boss are quite common in the private charter world. SMS, and its systematic approach to risk analysis, could warn a flight crew of the impending dangers involved with a particular flight. Factors such as airport familiarity and weather are specifically targeted in risk analysis. In an organization with SMS, every department of the company is trained on the established safety protocols and procedures. This mitigates the worry brought on to pilots to complete a certain mission when it is known to be too risky.
Pilot error is the leading cause of accidents in chartered flights³. Fortunately, SMS inherently targets this. Hazardous attitudes are a major contributor to pilot error: anti-authority, impulsivity, invulnerability, macho and resignation. Each of these have an antidote that pilots are trained on. Unfortunately, the proper antidote is not always applied, or the hazardous attitude is not recognized by the pilot until it is too late.
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