aj138;
If I may offer a thought - the discussion never left the original topic or got lost. Rather, it became for a moment an overall perspective encompassing those serious issues which you eloquently raise in your post. In my view your post is another extremely relevant and important contribution to this discussion to which regulators, line managers and senior airline executives alike must hearken to. I completely agree with your assessment of SMS - rather, the weaknesses and, though it is a good safety concept, the folly of SMS as it is presently being implemented.
Re:
The first one gave me cause to live because my conscience couldn't take it the second one asked me to leave as i had highlighted real safety cultural issues. I went down every avenue to address my concerns and due to the plain ignorance and lack of understanding of the role of an LAE and the of holding a CRS they shoo-shooed me and told me to wind my neck in.
The final nail or event which caused me to leave the first airline luckily enough didnt turn into the potential nightmare that it could have, but as the flight crew that day will tell you if it wasn't for me standing up and saying "i don't care what the procedures say" a major incident was averted.
and,
This smells of commercial riding roughshot over safety and having dealt with a lot of airline maintrols ( one who even decided the aircraft with a major hydraulic leak should be given a CRS as the leak was such that it could just about make the sector with the current leak rate) most of them are there to get the aircraft home rather than get the aircraft serviceable.
and, most importantly,
Some may say have you followed the SMS/ Error reporting route? well let me tell you no one is more qualified to understand the aspects of engineering and these Error reporting processes. They are paid lip service to both by the airlines and the NAA's. They are processes that just are there to give the public the perception that "we take safety seriously".
Like Security itself and the commentary upon the structural sham, your last comment has much to say regarding the corporate box-ticking that goes on in the name of SMS and flight safety programs. I know cases where flight data has been dismissed or simply not believed, ostensibly because it is commercially inconvenient. Under SMS, where managers are responsible for costs as well as safety, the conflict is irresolvable - most of the time, because the regulator is in essence, absent. SMS expects airlines to employ collected flight data and incident reports as well as a host of other robust and readily-available safety programs to first, know what their fleet of airplanes and their pilots are doing on a daily basis from which the organization may make changes in their operations as part of the SMS self-audit process. Unless that process is vigourously implemented, supported with appropriate resources and protections for the safety data in terms of confidentiality, (the absence of which will destroy any trust), SMS will become (and is already, in some quarters), a sham and public relations exercise. That is, until the accountable executive(s) are, under SMS, put in the oak chair to face prosecutors after an accident.
Ian, THIS is the story, if you're going to tell one at all - there are sufficient details in contributions such as this one and others, and sufficient perspective regarding the larger picture of the de-regulation of flight safety, to write from the "10,000ft view" and the view "on the ground" - What is being offered here is a view of "why" there is increasing risk in an aviation safety system which has, ironically through its very success, become taken-for-granted. You have other posts which offer details which illustrate "what" and "how" within this larger perspective.
Because this is an informal arena and not a place where the highest rigor in terms of statements and research is conducted or expected, you must put flesh to these understandings and perspectives. I submit that there is more than enough research within our industry to back up what is being said here in response to your question and post. I was with a highly respected airline which, despite it's well-deserved safety reputation and impressive record, is changing, placing on more occasions than I care to mention, commercial interests ahead of safety priorities when they
knew, through flight data and not mere pilot reports, that they had to act otherwise and did not. Like your concerns, ours were summarily dismissed. It is the felt comfort with the operation and certainly not the dismissal of our input, that is so concerning at present.