The CASA document at this link is interesting:
http://atcvantage.com/docs/CASA_sms-ceo.pdf
In the context of the discussion in this thread, the opening paras seem particularly relevant:
For the CEO of a business that operates through an Air Operators
Certificate (AOC) - that is an airline or charter business - the legal obligations for managing safety are up front in Section 28BE of the Civil Aviation Act
1988. It’s probably worth quoting the key provisions here:
Section 28BE
Duty to exercise care and diligence
(1) The holder of an AOC must at all times take all reasonable steps to ensure that every activity covered by the AOC, and everything done in connection with such an activity, is done with a reasonable degree of care and diligence.
(2) If the holder is a body having legal personality, each of it’s directors must also take steps specified in subsection (1).
There are some useful observations to make about these obligations. Firstly, the issue of duty of care is quite clear and places the ultimate responsibility for safety with the operator. Secondly, it is the ‘holder’ of an AOC who carries that responsibility. The vast majority of AOC’s are held by corporate legal entities (a company), so CASA places the practical responsibility on the office holders or ‘key personnel’ of the company as listed in subsection 28 (3) of the Act. The CEO is at the top of the list of those key personnel. So although day-to-day responsibility may be delegated to other officers, should a serious safety issue develop CASA’s main port of call will be the CEO. The third point to note is that the scope of that duty of care is very broad. ‘Every activity covered by the AOC’ and ‘everything done in connection with such an activity’ includes everything from flying the plane and maintaining it to loading, training, dangerous goods management and so on.
Subsection (2) highlights the responsibility that each director of a company operating under an AOC carries for safety. A CEO will in most cases also be a director of the company, and if CASA needed to approach non-executive directors to resolve a safety issue, that in itself would be a sign of potentially serious concern.
And later:
Although analysis over the years has highlighted the dominance of human factors involving technical people in accidents, it is clear that organizational factors in many cases play a major part. Organisational factors are clearly the responsibility of management in the broadest sense, not necessarily just technical management such as a chief pilot. Indeed, in many cases technical managers, even at a senior level, may need the support of more broadly focused managers, including the CEO, to see the system problems and identify system fixes.
…
But by far the biggest problem (present in well over 80% of accidents) is the human factor—where despite our best efforts, individuals make errors or deliberately engage in unsafe conduct. In managing safety, we must accept that what we are actually doing is carefully identifying risks and putting in place appropriate mitigators to prevent those risks resulting in accidents. Assessments of risks must cover the full spectrum associated with staff, hardware, software and the environment.
…
Safety management involves judgement, assessing priorities and making decisions. These are all elements of management in its more general sense.
And that’s what a CEO does—manage.
…
Provided the end result is acceptable, the approach gives industry the flexibility to run their business as they see fit—because that’s where the ultimate duty of care for managing safety sits. The consequence of a less prescriptive regulatory environment is a greater need for the business, particularly the CEO, to manage safety.