Thanks for posting the link to the report PJ2.
I continue to admire the work product of the Canadian TSB.
So it looks as though both members of the flight crew performed as expected during a situation with a potential for trouble by applying good airmanship and good crew coordination, bringing the flight to a relatively uneventful conclusion. Just exactly what every pro in the flying business would expect of them because that is the standard pro pilots work to meet and exceed. Even so, good job guys!
Yeah, if the PIC would have recognized the lack of correlation between what triggers required TSB reporting and the
declaration of an emergency, he'd have most likely filled out a report for them too, to go along with all the others submitted following this event. From there, I find it distressing that the company SMS failed to flag this event as being worthy of further investigation and that the worldwide reporting of UAS events along with the Boeing bulletin didn't trigger a threat assessment as per the "proactive" component of the SMS concept. It's fortunate for everyone concerned that the failure mode and the circumstances under which it occurred were such that the crew were able to deal with it easily. Alter the circumstances or the failure mode and maybe the outcome is altered as well. That's where the "proactive" threat assessment is supposed to pay off isn't it? But maybe not so much if a SMS fails to identify or acknowledge a threat which is widely known throughout the industry.
So in conclusion, while SMS may be a step towards effective self assessment and safety enhancement within an organization if properly employed, glaring holes are possible if it is not. And if regulatory bodies like TC are now tasked primarily with SMS enforcement rather than direct safety inspection and enforcement, then the potential for glaring holes in the Swiss cheese model going unaddressed is more than likely until such time as the "system" is perfected and the "system" for inspecting and testing the "system" is just as perfect! Until then, perhaps it'd be wise to maintain some good old fashioned human accountability in these organizations rather than allowing an inadequately implemented "system" to fail the humans it's supposed to protect.
So before I'm accused of being an organizational management "Luddite", I'll just admit that I am. Good management is smart people doing the right things. "Systems" are just sets of tools to be used by competent individuals in order to more reliably achieve consistent results. At no time can they replace human leadership, judgment or vision. In order for a SMS to be used effectively, someone still needs to be minding the store, maintaining an awareness of the threats and ensuring they are addressed. I think that could have been done allot better here.