Skyguide Safety

[Atlantic boy]

To their credit, skyguide management are finally recognising that safety management in ATC is a serious business. It's a pity it has taken 5 years, and 72 deaths, for the message to sink in. It is also a pity that the driver for their new, if belated, safety focus is about SES compliance, rather than a real commitment to ongoing safety enhancement, i.e. they have to do it, rather than they want to do it!

Will skyguide management demonstrate the commitment to go about this seriously, only time will tell! :ugh:

[Spitoon]

An interesting post Atlantic. I presume you single out Skyguide because you work for them but, apart from the fact that it was Skyguide that was most intimately involved with the Uberlingen accident, I wonder whether similar comments could be levelled at many other service providers around Europe?

As I understand it, SES exists because there are wide disparities - in safety and other domains - between European ANSPs and the legislation is supposed to bring all up to a minimum level. If this is correct then Skyguide falls somewhere on a scale but, I suspect, not at the bottom. And does it matter why an ANSP has a good safety system that works - be it because of SES or something else?

I recall reading about changes that were made in safety management at skyguide following the accident - did nothing really change or is there a breakdown in communication somewhere between the safety people and ops?

As I said, an interesting post, but can you provide some examples to show why you think things are not good?

[Atlantic boy]

Thanks for your comments, Spitoon. I have no intimate knowledge of other European ANSPs, so cannot make valid comments or comparisons with regard to real safety commitment by those. After Uberlingen, skyguide did recognise the need to overhaul its inadequate safety management system (they didn't need Einstein to figure that out!), because they had to so as to stay in business.

However, 5 years on, has anything really changed? There is still a questionable approach to safety management displayed by some senior managers within the company. There is no trust between ATC and management. There is no safety culture or no-blame culture in place. And the safety management group within the company still struggles to be effective due to lack of appropriately qualified resources. All after the company accepted responsibility for a mid-air!

Skyguide's safety management group are now trying to overhaul their SMS so as to deliver and demonstrate leading edge safty performance. My observations are purely that this necessary overhaul does not get full management support and , disappointingly, the lessons of 5 years ago have not been learnt. :=

[SINGAPURCANAC]

Having no in depth knowledge about European ANSP but as someone who has been working for years for one European ANSP I have had my own opinion about who is guilty for non implementation of SMS .
It is Eurocontrol. WHY?
The answer is very simple. Eurocontrol collects money from airspace users and those money they transfers to ANSPs . They have very strict regulation how ANSPs can spent money. On example : for toilet paper you get ..EUR per person employed in your company and so on . List is endless. But at the same time you have ANSP without safety officers ( because it is expensive ) to give someone salary for doing safety. I know at least 3 providers where safety officers don't exist at towers, approaches, within ACC teams... But safety manager at National level exists. And what he/she can do if there is no information from real operation work. Without proper information safety managers are blind. If they are blind no one is able to take action to change wrong praxis and so on..
We could further developed safety issue but as in case of teroristic organizations trully fight begins and finishes at money issues.
Finally I think that Eurocontrol has done and still is doing good job if we compare other parts of World. Huge areas even don't have such strong international organization as we in Europe have. We have good starting point but it should be improved at least toilet paper should be 3 layers instead of 2 layers toilet paper.

[Lon More]

They have very strict regulation how ANSPs can spent money. On example : for toilet paper you get ..EUR per person employed in your company and so on . List is endless.
I'd be interested to know where you got this info from.
AAIK Eurocontrol purely acts as a collecting agency in this matter. The amount charged per flight is determined by the mamber states and is in no way influenced by Euocontrol.
Presumably in Belgium only 2-ply toilet paper can be provided due to the extra costs involved in printing, "In the interest of economy please use both sides of the paper," in at least three languages?

[SINGAPURCANAC]

I had an idea to give paradox example, but unfortunatelly some of readers didn't catch the point. This EC agency has control over spending money. ANSPs have to prove where money goes. If EC says that ANSP has to implement something within some time frame it must be done, otherwise they could reduce " rate" for next period. That is the reason why I believe that toilet paper is more important than SMS in many cases.