Safety management is about addressing hazards and reducing risk to acceptable levels. How we go about doing that is not always formal and with recent events, there is no better time than now to take a step back and assess the way our organizations operate safely.
As noted, there have been a lot of highly publicized accidents in our industry in the past couple of months. It’s easy to waive them off as “not my flight dept’ but if you are doing that you are losing out on a fantastic opportunity to learn from others before something occurs to your organization.
Take the DCA crash involving the military helicopter and commercial airliner. While final assessments aren’t published, something like this is a great opportunity to ask your flight department if you fly into this particular airport and have some sort of preflight briefing to discuss the complexities of arriving there. Similarly, there are lots of other airports that have similarly complex situations and it’s a good time to take pause, ensure you’ve identified these other airports in your mission profile and review if you have special instructions or requirements about flying in or out of these airports as well. There’s no better time than now to take stock in the safety knowledge you already have, fill in gaps the best you can, and be prepared to advise your crews on future flights. Why wait to do this sort of organizational preparedness?
In addition to your formal reporting mechanisms, your crews and scheduling/dispatch team are constantly learning things about the places you fly to and from. When there is something of note, is this captured? Is this information made readily available for future flights? How is it brought to the crew’s attention on future flights as part of your preflight briefing and risk assessment process? There is no better time than now to do this quick checkin with your own operational knowledge and process to ensure that lessons learned are never forgotten!
For more information about Polaris Aero VOCUS SMS products and services to help you with managing safety, visit https://polarisaero.com or contact sales@polarisaero.com
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