tbavprof;
Self-regulation worked well in the financial services industry, didn't it?
I've posted elsewhere on PPRuNe on that very topic.
What executive(s) of financial institutions is/are in jail or even under suspicion over the recent financial collapse? Nobody. They're lined up at the Christmas bonus trough and will be lining up again at the "performance bonus" trough.
What we are seeing, although the term is now being disputed by those interested in promoting SMS for reasons other than flight safety, is the "
deregulation of flight safety", under the heading of "neoliberal" economic principles (google the term) - the privatization of everything under the sun and the accountability of no one in management or the executive, (
because even under SMS, no executive is going to be found "accountable" - it will be the crew who is criminally charged and historical safety data whose collection is mandated under SMS will be used against that crew) - just watch what's coming.
We are going to see the rapidly-descending graph line representing all fatal accidents from 1950 to the present, begin to rise over the next decade because of these foolish and risky industrial and legal decisions, and the executives and politicians who started this process are going to walk while blame for accidents once again returns to the cockpit so that the crew, if they survive at all, will be criminally prosecuted instead of executives who chose to ignore SMS because, when no one is watching, they could.
I have seen this happen already in a serious incident when the aircraft was simply re-dispatched and the downloaded flight safety program data ignored. Our protestations were similarly ignored.
SMS will work only if it has strong oversight by the regulator and not just of the audit process - otherwise, "profit", shareholder value and shareprice, especially these days, rules all behaviours and corporate decision-making. It is no more complicated than that. With safety programs dumped, the airline returns itself to a happy state of being able to live, and claim to be living, in willful ignorance of what their airplanes and crews are doing on a daily basis. That in itself is, in my view, criminal but that's why I'm not a lawyer.
Bill Voss is completely right in his comments but is fighting a tremendous tide against spending and/or supporting those departments within private corporations, the Flight Safety Departments and the Safety Reporting System, that aren't "profit centers", to use the business term.
As this kind of thinking takes hold throughout the industry, until the stupidity and recklessness of this response is realized, it will be increasingly up to commanders to exercise their legal authority to mind the store even more carefully and where necessary aggressively defend their operation against commercial priorities and pressures. The commander is always in charge, but the airline must make money so that everyone has a job. That said, commanders must know when they must set the park brake to achieve that which is required for safe flight. I've done it and it works very effectively because no department wants the blame for a delay.
That kind of exercising of command authority, to be effective and respected, must be extremely rare. Further, it has to be reasonable and it has to be by the book. Most airline ops are non-events and accomplished without untoward delay.
But when the shxt hits the fan and it's all coming apart and tough decisions must be made, they must be made from the cockpit because everyone else is eventually leaving their comfortable desk and is going home to a warm bed while you're still on the ramp dealing with a technical or de-icing or?... procedure before departing.
There is only one person who is going to end up in the oak chair answering questions from the prosecution if something goes south and you are one of the survivors, and it won't be an airline executive. Sadly, there are very few justices around anymore with the courage, patience and prescience of a Virgil Moshansky.