Safety Management System in the Airline - Southwest Airlines - Essay Example

?Safety Management System in the Airline Table of Contents Introduction 3 Consequences of a Poor Safety Culture in the Airline 4 Detection or Measuring a Poor Safety Culture in the Airline 5 Setting the Plans to Improve a Safety Culture in the Airline 6 Conclusion 8 References 9 Bibliography 11 Introduction The aspect of Safety Management System (SMS) is principally defined as a top-down as well as a formal business-type approach which helps to deal with safety risks on the basis of different effective safety principles. The entire procedure of SMS embraces setting the objectives, documentation and preparation along with monitoring as well as evaluation of the working performance of the system ensuring that the objectives are being fulfilled within a due course of time. The ultimate target of SMS is to increase the safety as well as to manage various sorts of risks (ASSE, n.d.). In this paper, the consequences of a poor safety culture on the effectiveness of an airline organisation namely Southwest Airlines will be taken into concern. Moreover, the procedures to detect or measure a poor safety operational culture along with setting effective plans in order to improve a safety culture in the organisation will also be portrayed in the discussion. Consequences of a Poor Safety Culture in the Airline The notion of safety culture is considered to be the ‘engine’ which drives the procedure towards the objective of preserving the utmost resistance in relation to any operational associated hazards in relation to airline industry. The consequences of a poor safety operational culture are the occurrence of individual as well as organisational accidents which in turn impose considerable impact upon the effectiveness of a particular airline organisation such as Southwest Airlines. From the perspective of individual accidents, it has been recognised that these sorts of accidents generally occur in those situations where the risks are much close to the people and the defences are quite non-existent or limited. The major reason of occurrence of individual accidents in the aviation industry is human error (Reason, 1998). It has been recognised in the early years and also in recent days that most of the accidents or crashes associated with airlines are caused due to the unsafe measures adopted by the aircrew and most importantly due to human error. In this context, it can be said that the chief kinds of human error include decision and skill-based faults. The pilot of a respective airline can make a rule-based mistake which ultimately results in the person to take a wrong decision that ultimately causes the crash. From the viewpoint of the skill-based errors, the accidents are duly caused due to the malfunction of the memory or the attention of the pilot about a particular operational function (Shappell & Wiegmann, 2004). The effect of the individual accidents leads to huge damage to the people. Along with the individual accidents, organisational linked accidents can take place in the systems of an organisation like Southwest Airlines. The chief reason for the occurrence of organisational accidents is the lack of technological innovations. It involves various people who work at different functioning levels within the organisation. The crucial effect of organisational accidents often disturbs the entire working procedure of the airline organisation such as Southwest Airlines which ultimately puts huge amount of people into danger (Reason, 1998). For instance, the cause of Lexington Plane Crash which occurred in the year 2006 was human error that can be considered as a type of individual accident. In this regard, it has been viewed that the pilot involved in the crash used the wrong pathway to take off the plane or flight which ultimately led towards the crash. The effect of this plane crash led to the death of 49 people and posed tremendous negative impact upon the business image as well as the customer service linked facilities of the organisation by a considerable level (ThinkReliability, 2011). Detection or Measuring a Poor Safety Culture in the Airline In order to detect or measure a poor safety culture within an airline organisation such as Southwest Airlines, the organisation can utilise both quantitative as well as qualitative approaches. From the viewpoint of quantitative or data-driven approaches, a poor safety operational culture can be detected by focusing on the aspects which include Flight Data Monitoring (FDM), conducting personnel surveys, performing organisation audits along with preparing safety reports. Moreover, the airlines can also employ the facet of non real-time or real time simulations in order to detect or measure a poor safety culture within the organisation. By utilising this particular simulation model, the airline organisations can easily recognise their prevailing poor safety operational cultures. From the perspective of qualitative approach, the airline organisations can measure or detect their prevailing poor safety conditions by conducting informal or formal based discussions as well as brainstorming session with the experts (Maragakis & et. al., n.d.). It has been apparent that a poor safety culture might prevail in any airline business organisation such as Southwest Airlines due to various significant factors. The factors may include lack of valuable resources of an airline organisation, poor infrastructure, deficiency in operational effectiveness, need for resourceful as well as skilled working personnel and insufficient safety oversight (IATA, 2012). Apart from the qualitative as well as quantitative approaches, the airline business organisations can also detect or measure their existing poor safety operational culture by emphasising upon the aspect of checklist. The notion of checklist portrays a detailed list about the poor safety operational culture which has been extracted from the previous experiences on the basis of past results. This particular technique engages the systematic execution of a suitable checklist that can contribute towards the successful detection or the measurement of poor safety culture within a particular airline business organisation like Southwest Airlines. The major benefits of utilising the idea of checklists for detecting the poor safety culture are that this process can be employed by every non-system experts and it is considered to be a quite systematic along with an easy procedure to execute. Moreover, the other advantages of conducting checklist are that it tends to capture broad assortment of previous experiences as well as knowledge and most decisively ensures that the most noticeable and the common difficulties relating with the poor safety operational culture are not ignored (Maragakis & et. al., n.d.). Setting the Plans to Improve a Safety Culture in the Airline In order to improve the safety culture into a better form, International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) which is regarded as a specialised agency belonging to United Nations has developed a safety plan or business operational model on the basis of global aviation standards. ICAO established the operational model of ‘Global Aviation Safety Plan’ in the year 1997 through which a practical outlook towards safety is ensured for the passengers or the customers of the airline organisations. The basic targets of ICAO in applying the business model of ‘Global Aviation Safety Plan’ are to decrease the huge number of airline crashes or accidents along with attaining considerable reduction in the rates of the accidents and offering better safety to the passengers (ICAO, 2007). In this similar context, International Air Transport Association (IATA) which is regarded as a worldwide industry trade airlines group launched a business operational model of ‘Implementation Program for Safe Operations In Africa’ (IPSOA) in the year 2009 which focuses upon the aspect of data-driven management of safety process towards the passengers. It has been recognised recently that approximately 40% decrease in accidents is viewed in Africa due to the proper implementation of IPSOA (IATA, 2012). European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) promotes the common safety principles as well as environmental safety particularly in the area of civil airline in Europe and worldwide. The major responsibility of the agency is to monitor as well as to utilise effective safety rules along with making analytical research (EASA, 2012). The agency focuses upon the operational business model of making certain rules related to taking environmental actions in which it plays a decisive part in the aviation industry. The chief tasks for the agency in relation to the aforementioned model are to preserve as well as to develop the necessary ecological requirements along with offering valuable guidance material to the airline organisations such as Southwest Airlines (EASA, 2012). Similarly, the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) business operational model of IATA is recognised to be a system which is principally designed for the assessment of the operational management as well as the various control systems of an airline organisation. This particular model helps to conduct audits in an organised way which is quite supportive for the airline organisations like Southwest Airlines to detect as well as to measure their poor safety culture (IATA, 2012). The aforementioned activities of the organisations, if followed by Southwest Airlines, can ultimately enhance its national or regional safety culture by a considerable level. Moreover, the other organisations in the region would also become motivated to raise their safety related culture by initiating the aforementioned functions or initiatives. Thus, it can be stated that the different operational models which has been mentioned above ultimately help the airline organisations to enhance their principal safety culture by a considerable extent. Conclusion The improvement of safety culture is quite an important factor especially for the airline organisations in order to decrease the huge number of airline accidents or crashes along with lowering other important critical causes. The aforementioned business models impose significant impact upon the overall effectiveness of the airline organisations as well as upon their safety culture and also assist them to attain decreased rate of airline accidents. However, it can be concluded that the various significant business models which have been introduced by IOSA, EASA and IATA positively affect the business performance of the airline organisations in terms of raising the standard of safety and diminishing the accident rates. Moreover, it can be stated that it is quite possible to legislate for the maintenance and advancement of a good safety culture in the airline organisation such as Southwest Airlines by a considerable level. References ASSE, No Date. System Safety and the Benefits of Safety Management Systems. Education. [Online] Available at: http://www.asse.org/education/businessofsafety/docs/AJBayukPaper.pdf [Accessed July 06, 2012]. EASA, 2012. What We Do. The Agency. [Online] Available at: http://easa.europa.eu/what-we-do.php [Accessed July 06, 2012]. EASA, 2012. Rulemaking Environmental Activities. Environment. [Online] Available at: http://easa.europa.eu/environment/rulemaking-environmental-activities.php [Accessed July 06, 2012]. IATA, 2012. Raising The Bar. Pages. [Online] Available at: http://www.iata.org/pressroom/airlines-international/april-2011/pages/safety.aspx [Accessed July 06, 2012]. IATA, 2012. IATA Operational Safety Audit. Certification. [Online] Available at: http://www.iata.org/ps/certification/iosa/Pages/index.aspx [Accessed July 06, 2012]. ICAO, 2007. Global Aviation Safety Plan. Documents. [Online] Available at: http://legacy.icao.int/icao/en/anb/gasp/docs/GASP_en.pdf [Accessed July 06, 2012]. Maragakis, I. & et. al., No Date. Hazards identification in Practice. Guidance on Hazards Identification. [Online] Available at: http://easa.europa.eu/essi/ecast/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ECASTSMSWG-GuidanceonHazardIdentification1.pdf [Accessed July 06, 2012]. Reason, J., 1998. Achieving A Safe Culture: Theory And Practice. Reports. [Online] Available at: http://www.raes-hfg.com/reports/21may09-Potential/21may09-JReason.pdf [Accessed July 06, 2012]. Shappell, S. & Wiegmann, D., 2004. Errors. Papers. [Online] Available at: http://asasi.org/papers/2004/Shappell%20et%20al_HFACS_ISASI04.pdf [Accessed July 06, 2012]. ThinkReliability, 2011. Why did the Lexington Plane Crash Happen? Lexington Plane Crash 2006- Cause Map. [Online] Available at: http://www.thinkreliability.com/CM-Lexingtoncrash.aspx [Accessed July 06, 2012]. Bibliography Landry, J., 2011. Ramp Safety Practices. Transportation Research Board. Patankar, M. S., 2012. Safety Culture: Building and Sustaining a Cultural Change in Aviation and Healthcare. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Salas, E. & Maurino, E., 2010. 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