Question

Safety is an imperative component of airline management. Identify airline safety management within the organizational structure of a major air carrier and discuss the core functions of administration and the safety department.

Provide your insight on what you believe the most important safety concerns are today within the industry and research a former regulation change that provided a benefit to the aviation industry and outline the core components of that change for the class.

Answer 1

There is no doubt or debate that safety is imperative when it comes to the discussion of airline management. This can be a complicated process that is compounded by the fact that there are millions of people using aviation as a means of transportation per year. Many problems can arise from the sheer quantity of things that can go wrong. It is important that employees not only know the safety procedures of the airline but also can report safety violations; not only violations but problems the employees may see causing issues for the company. While reading through the posts that have already been made this week, Dane Anders made a great observation of the Alaska Air Group's safety implementation. After reading his post and researching the "Ready, Safe, Go" campaign, this is more or less the style that should be implemented in companies. A safety department is not solely responsible for thinking out all the possible problems that may occur. Many ground employees have hands-on knowledge that can benefit the company in insight as to where it needs to improve; they should be able to share that and even be rewarded for doing so. Everyone must do their part in making the company a better and safer place, from CEO to baggage handler everyone has the right and the responsibility to protect the safety of themselves and the customers.

The question I have started to ask myself, especially after beginning this class, is where does the safety aspect of this start. There should be a basic plan in place before a company like this is off the ground. A company is not going to get many investors if there are not simple systems in place to mitigate the number of accidents that may occur or plans for what to do if there is an accident. An SMS (Safety Management System) can go a long way in helping with this. In addition to an SMS, Safety administrators can help greatly with holding together and developing an organizations' safety system. There need to be people that develop safety policies and procedures, solve safety issues, investigate safety risks, develop safety courses, and overall make the safety of the company a priority. This should not be a solely one-person job, this should be delegated to a whole department because of how vast of a job it is. These administrators can help with a variety of functions, mainly, they should be tasked with creating the safety manuals, coordinating training, develop the topic of safety meetings, deal with safety organizations and overall deal with the safety of people and the airline.

I will admit, before this discussion I had not put much thought into the biggest safety concerns regarding airports or airlines. I stumbled upon the Aviation Safety Network’s website (I will be adding some graphs from their website) and they have some terrific information as to what causes fatal accidents. Most of these accidents, which happen to be mechanical and pilot error, proves that it is important to have a progressive SMS to prevent this from happening. Although we see an estimated 1/2,000,000 flights having an accident, having the systems required into place would mitigate the incidents we see even further. This is not to take away from the fact that there are other horrible and completely preventable accidents. Quoting from Mr. Anders again, unmanned aerial drones have offered great risks to flight here in the past few years. This is a new technology that has gone unregulated thus far. I believe that this couple with the mechanical and human error mistakes are the greatest safety issue that we have regarding the people and the property. I believe this because they are preventable. There are many forces outside of our control that we have no control over. Take the weather, for example, there is a science to forecasting it and avoiding it, however, it is not one-hundred percent accurate. Ultimately, we have a particularly good idea of what to do about it and how to go about missing it. Stupidity, however, is extremely difficult to control and counter.