Safety First?
Everyone is responsible for safety, but ultimately, it's management's responsability or so it says in every airline's company safety policy. Problem is, airline management isn't trained on safety, the safety group and the pilots are. The safety group's job is to run a safety management program based normally on an anonymous reporting system and an internal evaluation program. They then work together with upper management to iron out any company culture problems that may be hindering safety. They require everyone's trust and that's done by passing around info on what's being done, normally thru a safety magazine or monthly newsletter. Still, half the pages in an accident report are dedicated to latent errors in the organization, poor company safety culture that stems down from management. If management reenforces saving fuel because costs are up or always being on time to stay ahead of the competition, then it's no surprise that in the long run this will become the company's mantra, in detriment to safety. Commercial pressures will always exist,in the end, it's up to the safety group and ultimately up to the pilots to put their foot down and not allow any monkey business. We owe it to the people who put their lives solely in our hands when they board our aircraft.