4 airlines cited by Transport Canada for safety non-compliance

[rotornut]

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/03/10/popular-airlines-flagged-for-safety-system-non-compliance.html

[Willie Everlearn]

SMS is a joke.
Administrative processes work for business managers not aviation safety.:ugh::ugh::ugh:

Willie :=

[JV]

Have to agree with the above, SMS is in fact a joke. Many of the TC personnel do not even understand the spirit of it (which would be correcting serious institutional errors, which all do anyway), but are really good at jumping all over the minor errors in record keeping and their quite difficult to understand definitions of process and procedure.

The notion of SMS is a good idea, but the way it gets interpreted by the authorities is out to lunch.

[Jet Jockey A4]

SMS is a joke.
Administrative processes work for business managers not aviation safety.:ugh::ugh::ugh:

Willie :=


Agreed! It is totally useless.

[Flatface]

The SMS system can only survive in any company if the participants continue to submit reports. Once the reports stop coming, that SMS system in that company will cease to exist. This was made clear to me when the company sent SMS coordinators to each station to explain that the report submissions were slowing down and if this trend continued, the SMS system would fail.
Soon after the introduction of the SMS system, participants aligned themselves on one side or the other (pro or con) It seemed that management were all aligned on one side (pro) and all the front line workers were on the other side (con)
It soon became clear that management was using the reporting system to hand out discipline, result, all reporting ceased. I am out of the game now and cannot say how the SMS system in that company has developed since then.

[JV]

That is a very good observation of real life in contrast to the pie in the sky transport canada BS. One of the major pillars of the sms system was that it was a non punitive system, and guess what, it became a punitive system galore.

But what's the point of explaining this sort of thing to a public servant who lives in lala land, they are truly incapable by nature of grasping the very notion that the world is not perfect.

[+TSRA]

A Safety Management System can work just fine if it is confined to its key purpose of safety reporting. It is true that the average TC inspector has zero ideas on how an SMS is supposed to operate; but, what do you expect when the qualifications for an inspector permit a flight instructor with two years experience to become POI of a multi-billion dollar, international airline.

The problem as I see it is too many operators combine their SMS with every other management reporting tool and the system is diluted and degraded to the point where there is too much data. Now, I know there are people out there asking how you can have too much data, but they're likely the ones with an MBA who took the "people are resources" line from ECON 211 a little too literally.

For example, I am supposed to use my operators version of SMS to report on everything, including dress and deportment issues. That's not a safety issue, yet I am supposed to report that Suzie arrived to work with her hair touching her collar or that Jonny arrived at the gate 3 minutes late and had not informed crew scheduling. I can't imagine going back to when I had to waffle through all these BS reports, trying to find the one-in-two hundred report that would reduce the operators TLI's.

Honestly though, how could TC or any of us not expect SMS to become punitive over time? There are, after all, only so many reports of a pilot reporting "I screwed up" before it comes time for a "come to Jesus" meeting in the CPs office.

Plus, you can't put a procedure to protect against stupidity, despite what the exceptional employees of 330 Sparks Street seem to think.

[J.O.]

A safety management system is everything you do in your operation to ensure you are operating safely and in compliance with regulations. It is NOT just a safety reporting program.

[JV]

Agree with that. Report the problem, and find a way to fix the problem so that it does not happen again. Fix systemic issues and all of that sort of stuff.

That is the intuitive reason for sms. Pretty simple, right?

But that is not what is happening in the system. As one of the previous posters pointed out, there is so much non relevant information piled into the reporting system that it has become a farce and has taken on a life of it's own, which does not even address core issues.

The wording in the reference documentation has become soooo.......imprecise, wishywashy and horribly complex that virtually everyone interprets ''what TC wants'' differently resulting in rather large system differences and confused people both in the regulators personnel and company personnel alike.

And the root intention was simple; keep things safe.

Sounds great in theory, nightmare in reality.

[Willie Everlearn]

JV, well said.

From an earlier post, I wouldn’t hang the “uselessness” of SMS on Transport Canada or their CAIs. The dawn of SMS was a good idea but an untested idea. Over time, it’s effectiveness has only been successful in limited ways at very few operations. It’s become an administrative process out of scope.
Best implemented at small carriers with no safety program in place. Unfortunately, executive authority at a small carrier was handed to the owner (as it should have been) but proved, in many cases, to be a conflict of interest, not a solution for safety concerns.

Willie

[Dave Hadfield]

The great thing about modern systems like this is that the supervisors are so overwhelmed by emails and notices already (hundreds per day), that they don't really have time to see what's going on, and if you don't submit a report (and if you stay out of the evening news), they never know what has actually happened on the line.


You just drive home with a prepared story, but never end up having to write the report.


"When the fox guards the chickens, you get to eat salad."