Last week, I attended a Safety Management Systems (SMS) seminar at Aviation Industry Expo that was co-sponsored by NATA and AMTSociety.
During the course of the seminar, an FAA representative discussed how the FAA and the aviation community need to get past the "blame game" of the past, and move forward towards a safety culture where the FAA and industry work together to identify risks and develop an even safer aviation system. He encouraged more sharing of incident and accident information between industry and the FAA.
Maybe it's just me, but how can the FAA be both a regulator, an enforcer of the rules, and a safety partner at the same time? Aren't the two mutually exclusive? The FAA can either focus on regulatory enforcement and oversight, or on carrying the torch of SMS. I don't believe it can do both.
Take Southwest Airlines for example. The airline self-disclosed that it had missed some inspections. A true SMS attitude would have taken that information, figured out the root cause of the missed inspections, and implemented corrective actions to prevent such an occurrence from happening again.
Instead the blame game attitude prevailed, and a $10.2 million fine was imposed on Southwest.
If I were an airline and saw what happened to Southwest, why on earth would I want to self-disclose any information to the FAA? And without the airlines and aviation companies self-disclosing information, an effective SMS system is only a pipe dream.
What do you think? The FAA -- enforcer or safety champion?
Thanks for reading,
Joe Escobar
