All GA operators have a Safety Management System.
All GA Safety Management Systems I have seen appear to reach their limit with discussions surrounding mitigation methods for insect bites, back injury prevention and the hot water temperature at sink.
A proactive SMS in the world of piston ops should result in progressively retro fitting Engine Management Systems, trend logging and training the crews along the lines of Advanced Engine Management.
A reactive system denies the users the information to predict adversity and avoid it, be it absence of radar for night IFR ops or an EMS for engine health. If you are in GA piston ops how many operators do you know who fit the proactive scenario as opposed to the reactive scenario.
I would be impressed if I ever saw a contracted safety auditor identify these items. Typically they seem only interested in seeing a paper work trail. But then again the purpose of the exercise is the exchange of money for the appropriate ticks and an ongoing business relationship.
Here is a sad but true story of SMS.
An operator now since sold, had 3 accidents in short succession, all 3 serious but without injury miraculously. Managements reaction was to bring in a safety system auditor with a national presence and a lot of "heart" for the job.
After an appropriate amount of money was spent (charged) their finding.....and this is truly gold logie stuff...
A more sophisticated comprehensive check list system was identified as being the solution, so the simple and effective military Flight Mate scroll check system was removed from each aircraft. In its place a multi thousand dollar (not including fitment) electronic system with both voice audio and large LCD text display for each individual check was mounted into each aircraft with yoke button advancement through each check, very astronautic indeed.
This large solid alloy rectangular contraption with sharp corners was mounted into the Shrikes at forehead height effectively creating a blind spot and a near certain death scenario should your head impact with it in an accident.
Shortly after installation on a repositioning flight of some duration I counted the number of individual checks incorporated into this state of the art system, there were some 340 individual checks. A simple circuit required 14 minutes to advance and hear all the required checks for the circuit. The complete scrolling of checks including the emergency check list took about 45 minutes to scroll through.
If you have read this far perhaps some of you may be shaking your head and the ineptitude and ludicrousy of all this. Well save some energy for this....the coup de gras....
The audio and text in one of these bizzare check list systems installed into one of the Shrikes was for a King Air.
The outcome to all this was that crews promptly stopped using the new system as it was completely impractical and reverted in the absence of any other functional checklist to individual flow scans and mnemonics. The bottom line likely in the range of 100k plus headaches for engineering while they stopped routine maintenance to deal with the complex fitment process.
Sheer brilliance, a multi national company with a multi billion turnover and 2 dedicated Safety Officers for that particular base operating 9 aircraft. Advised by one of Australia's leading aviation safety auditors, what could possibly go wrong.
A division of that same multi national is at present out there looking for MH370.
Last edited by Obidiah; 25th Jan 2015 at 04:42.