Porter faced Transport Canada ultimatum

[a330pilotcanada]

Good Afternoon All:

This was written by the Windsor Star:

Porter faced Transport Canada ultimatum


Postmedia News October 18, 2011


Porter Airlines Inc., is one of a handful of air carriers - and the only large commercial airline - that has faced the threat of being grounded for failing to comply with Transport Canada's air safety rules, government statistics show.
But the company won't say what the issue was that led Transport Canada to issue the warning. Transport Canada is also being mum, raising questions about how much the flying public is entitled to know about an airline's record.
Since 2005, when Transport Canada implemented a new inspection system in civil aviation called Safety Management Systems (SMS), the department has issued 11 notices of suspension to aircraft maintenance companies or commercial airlines. The rarely-used enforcement tool usually gives companies 30 days to comply with Canada's aviation regulations or have their Air Operating Certificate suspended until the operation makes changes to bring it into compliance.
Five of the 11 companies specialize in aircraft maintenance and three companies operate chartered flights, according to SMS data tabled in the House of Commons by Transport Minister Denis Lebel at the request of Liberal MP Denis Coderre.
Three passenger airlines - Porter, First Nations Transportation and Buffalo Airways Ltd. - also were issued notices of suspension, the statistics show.
Transport Canada went on to suspend the air operation certification of First Nations Transportation. Porter, Buffalo Airways and the other companies tabled corrective action plans that were accepted by Transport Canada, so the suspension notices were rescinded before the grounding date came into effect.
Both Porter and Transport Canada declined to release any other details, including the nature of the non-compliance or when the notice was issued.
Porter's spokesman Brad Cicero said the government's inspection system is confidential and non-punitive to encourage companies and employees to report all safety-related matters.
© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star


Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Porter+faced+Transport+Canada+ultimatum/5565250/story.html#ixzz1bAjI4n5v (http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Porter+faced+Transport+Canada+ultimatum/5565250/story.html#ixzz1bAjI4n5v)

[Basset hound]

So did AVEOS, Air Canada's heavy maintenance provider.

[er340790]

Well, as regular SLF with Porter, I for one would certainly be keen to know whether this was merely procedural lapses or something more serious.

So let's hear the Ru bit of PPRuNe please...

[+TSRA]

Pre SMS (Safety Management System) days, an NOS (Notice of Suspension) was issued to an operator where Transport Canada felt that the general flying public was or could potentially be put at serious risk. Generally this was through a serious violation of the Canadian Aviation Regulations. As the article correctly states, this was a last resort measure that was hardly used.

Beginning in 2005 all airlines in Canada (CAR 705 Operators) were scheduled for their Phase 4 SMS Audits. This was the final stage in the SMS roll-out and its intent was for an operator to show they had a fully functioning Safety Management System. All in all, a good idea.

In 2005 however,Transport Canada did not have a unified grasp on what an SMS should look like, feel like or work like. They knew there was a regulation saying you had to have one, and what it should comprise of (Risk Management, Corrective Actions, Trend Monitoring, Non-Punitive Reporting, etc) but there was no additional information stating the different approaches - so as far as inspectors had to go on, their was only one way of doing this, but because no one had an approved system yet, inspectors could not tell what that one way was.

Because of this lack of guidance, when Transport Canada sent out their inspection teams and operator could have been faced with a situation where the lead inspector was interpreting a regulation/requirement completely different than his/her team. Again, they had no base line to work from. Operators, on the other hand, were building these systems based on the regulation, in some cases bringing in contractors for :mad: loads of moneyfor them. Unfortunately this began to lead to a second situation where Transport Canada was forced to begin issuing findings because an operator did not "meet" the requirements.

Of course (and as it should be) within Transport Canada's own procedures an operator may only have a set limited number of Findings open before that operator must have an NOS applied. This is only the safe way of doing things, however it created a situation where, because findings were being handed out for everything that did not comply, or it did comply but the inspection team did not realize it until much later, operators reached this magical number quite quickly.
Most CAR 705 Operators had an NOS applied, but when Transport Canada realized that almost all 705 Operators were about to be shut down, they reevaluated the situation and in the cases I am aware of, removed the NOS before the effective date.

Since then both Transport Canada and the affected operators have been working very closely together to come to grips with what is a very complex management system and in my humble opinion, we as an industry are moving in the right direction.

With all new things there are issues to be dealt with, and this was one of them - unfortunately it now makes the airlines and Transport Canada look like they have egg on their face when in reality both were working to the same goal, it was just a very messy road.