What is an Aviation Safety Management System (SMS)?
Safety is the highest concern in the aviation industry, with every rule, law, and procedure motivated by the desire to increase protections for the passengers and cabin crew of every flight. Given the inherent risks of flight, adherence to these standards must be unrelenting and absolute.
Historically, the process for improving safety has been reactionary. Authorities have had to wait for accidents, investigate them to determine the cause, and then make changes to avoid it from happening again in the future. This can solve one or two problems at a time, but it often fails to address less obvious contributing factors, and it is of little consolation to those that have lost loved ones. Thankfully, new flight safety equipment that take a more preventative approach are becoming more commonplace.
Safety management systems (SMS) are a core concept in the aviation industry, recognized by both the FAA and ICAO. This structured approach to managing and improving safety has been put in place at airports classified as:
- A small, medium, or large hub airport in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems.
- Identified by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection as a port of entry, designated international airport, landing rights airport, or user fee airport.
- Identified as having more than 100,000 total annual operations.
Safety management systems are divided into four components:
- Safety policy: establishing senior management’s commitment to improving safety standards, and defining the methods, processes, and organizational structures needed to meet safety goals.
- Safety risk management: Determines the need for and adequacy of new or revise risk controls based on assessment of acceptable risk.
- Safety assurance: evaluates the continued effectiveness of implemented risk control strategies, and supports the identification of new hazards.
- Safety promotion: includes training, communication, and other actions to create a positive safety culture within the airport’s workforce.
There are numerous safety tools and equipment used to manage and improve safety in the aviation industry, such as training videos, risk management methodologies, document management software, learning systems, training article libraries, and survey tools. Operators and employees need to be trained in using the right tools for the right jobs.
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