Just going bacl to lookingforajob's post.
I am very sceptical of SMS, on two grounds, do airlines have the internal or external expertise to run SMS, and isn't there a conflict of interest. For example, turnarounds, I do not believe that airlines should be in the position under a SMS to decide a minimun turn around time of say twenty minutes. It is simply not safe practice. Hence Germanwings, i can only assume the captain did not have time to use the toilet. Again under SMS, on a european flight there is no need for flight crew to leave the flight deck, again I doubt if this is ever part of SMS.
Again in terms of airlines setting their own SMS, because the regulalator just wants to save money. So acase in point, in the Grenfell Tower fire, while fire safety was regulated by the Fire Brigade and Local Authority, these days the building contractor can apparently simply use a Fire Risk Assessor. It has been pointed out by the Fire Brigade Union, that anyone can gain this qualification in three to five days!
Getting back to the original question, commercial aviation continues to become statistically safer at this stage, which is down to technology and training, but it might not continue that way, due in my opinion of a lack of manual flying skills, worst still there is an ongoing North American and European study into single crew airline operation. Incredible when in some circumstances a two or three man crew can note cope, the AF A330 comes to mind.