Im sorry, but this whole bashing the SMS thing is getting a little boring now. I've bit my tounge with you for long enough.
Personally, I've seen the benifit of SMS within our own company, whose corporate culture has changed quite dramatically over the past two years.
Having just gone through the final audit with Transport within the last 6 months, they seem to take this pretty damned serious and from what I've been told and have seen, this whole "let the companies have full oversight" is a crock of s*it. You think for one second Transport would allow a company to continue operating unsafely? Wrong answer. The POI, PMIs and CSOs will all still be required to do routine audits, during which time they will assess the operators SMS, whether they tell you about it or not. As for me, if I walked into an operator as a POI and saw unsafe acts which were not being dealt with in a reasonable manner, you can bet your ass I'd be serving up NOS' on silver platers; and they will be too.
And dont think for a second that the major operators like Air Canada, West Jet, Canadian North, Morningstar and the lot dont have a first rate SMS. While not an employee, I have seen bits of the WestJet one and Im impressed. It works, and they see the benefit because it saves them money on all this proactive reporting - something which they thought was going to cost them money.
Oh god, but they dont have to report to Transport! Youre right, and because they dont have the cousin of the taxman breathing down their backs they can come up with solutions which are tailored to their company, rather than one made for a two plane operator who knows nothing of operating a fleet of of 100 aircraft or more.
But you will naturally counter with the fact that this means they may cut corners. Why? Cutting corners now may cost them triple the amount of money three years down the road, and seeing as most operators have some form of shareholder, corporation or owner Im pretty sure they will go with the "cheap" option which would be to pay out the safe way now rather than pay out the millions later.
You know, its going to certain "mom-and-pop" operators trying to compete in markets who are so saturated with other companies, managed by Chief Pilots and Executives who were around way back before whatever preceeded the ANOs who think this is all Ottawa bulls*it and do nothing with SMS that we will have the problem with; but then, was that not the case before SMS. Is that not what SMS is trying to weed out??? hmmm...
SMS wont save people who go into it thinking its a bad thing, and frankly DHC2Widow youre not even giving this a chance. Lets just all jump on the bandwaggon now and call it a failure shall we.
As for those people who grab a thumb drive, read it and see "...circumvented for profit...". or the like, these are still companies who have to make a profit. What you see as "...circumventing for profit..." may simply be nothing less than the SMS requirement for "Risk Management" and the company, airport authority or other institution may be saying that the likelihood and severity of an event happening is, in their opinion, worth the risk.
Just because someone does not agree with that Risk Assessment does not mean its wrong or unsafe. Would you call landing a fully loaded 727 or 737 onto an ice runway safe? Probably not, but guess what...it happens all the time in Canada's north and to people used to seeing them land on 11,000 feet of straight pavement, it may not sound like the safest thing in the world, yet talk to people who know what the hell they are doing and you may just find that its just fine.
See heres the problem with most of the SMS naysayers. They are - mostly - people with just enough information, but with no experience that are making the complaints.