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A Robust SMS is a Must During COVID-19 and Beyond

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The novel COVID-19 global pandemic has introduced unimaginable challenges for airlines and  forced them to drastically change their operations, from implementing new cleaning and screening protocols to restricting the number of passengers onboard. With the significant drop in passenger travel, airlines have resorted to downsizing to stay afloat, resulting in organizational restructuring. Change is inevitably accompanied by risk, but the pandemic has presented an overwhelming number of risks, which is compounded by the reduction in resources. With more issues to address and fewer resources, it is prudent for airlines to optimize their Safety Management System (SMS) to stabilize their operations and ensure safety during these unprecedented times.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines need to create new reporting templates or modify existing ones to capture COVID-19 hazards, such as flight crew fatigue due to increased screening protocols, passengers without a mask, suspected cases of COVID-19, and other related risks. Airlines need to examine their tools and systems to ensure that they have an optimum platform that allows them to capture these new risks. The SMS software should be flexible to adapt to the airline’s workflow and business processes, as well as accommodate evolving needs. The software should be configurable to support the creation and modification of templates, taxonomy, and risk matrices. It is integral that the SMS platform is user friendly to allow staff with varying levels of technical comfort to easily submit safety reports. An intuitive system that can be navigated with minimal training is also beneficial for external stakeholders, such as analysts and auditors, to use the system. With staff performing various tasks, the SMS software should support multiple users at once, be accessible across all devices and browsers, and accommodate functionality in a mobile and offline capacity to enable staff to perform their duties efficiently.

Airlines can also utilize their SMS to ensure that no safety and regulatory responsibilities were overlooked by conducting Safety Risk Assessments (SRAs) and implementing mitigation strategies. The SMS platform should provide seamless interconnectivity and transfer of data. The data needs to be linked for easy reference from the initial safety report to the corrective action and all the audits, investigations, and SRAs in between. The SMS platform should not simply capture data, but also retrieve meaningful insights, such as the ability to delineate most common root causes. Since airlines currently have limited staff and resources, this functionality relieves staff of this responsibility, making them available to tend to more critical matters.

SMS is the backbone of airline operations, so it is of paramount importance that it is continuously improved to ensure safety at all times. An optimized SMS platform will equip airlines with all the necessary tools to identify and mitigate any risks during regular operations, the COVID-19 global pandemic, and any unforeseeable circumstance that may arise in the future.

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Summary of Frequent Taxonomy in Airline SMS

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Introduction

There are multiple components that are needed for an effective Safety Management System (SMS); one of them being detailed and accurate taxonomy. In SMS, Taxonomy is a tool that is used to accurately describe safety events, hazards, human factors, etc. by providing a structured and standardized assortment of descriptive phrases and terms. This improves the quality of information and communication within an organization as there is a common language, which increases focus on safety issues within an airline.

To establish a comprehensive reporting system that provides valuable data regarding safety events, taxonomies are critical for airline SMS. Through our years of experience in implementing various taxonomies for a variety of airlines, we have become familiar with taxonomies that address specific elements of aviation safety event reporting. We have also discovered that airlines with successful safety programs configure different taxonomies to better meet their operational needs which enhances their safety operations. Summarized below are just a few of the many taxonomies that are most commonly utilized by airlines.

 

Airline Taxonomies

Accident/Incident Data Reporting Program – ADREP

ADREP is an ICAO taxonomy that carefully describes possible situations or subjects related to a safety event. ADREP consists of taxonomies related to Aircraft Categories, Entities and attributes, Aviation Operation, Descriptive factors, Events, Events phases, Occurrence category, Occurrence classes, Organizations/Persons, etc.

Basic categories for ADREP events are

  • Aircraft/system/component
  • Operations of the aircraft
  • Consequential events
  • Air Navigation Services
  • Aerodrome and ground aids
  • Civil Aviation Authority/administration
  • Non-compliance with regulations

 

Harmonization of European Incident Definitions Initiatives for ATM – HEIDI

HEIDI is a taxonomy designed for the Safety of Air Navigation. HEIDI taxonomy is a useful supporting tool for a cohesive approach to the reporting process. The HEIDI taxonomy covers the following aspects of safety reporting:

  • Background
  • Event Types
  • Descriptive Factors
  • Explanatory Factors
  • Classification Scheme
  • Safety Recommendations
  • Glossary

 

Threats and Errors Management – TEM

TEM, which was developed by industry safety experts and crewmembers, is a taxonomy that is convenient for event reporting for Aircraft Captains. TEM’s entire concept, while focused on human factors, is finding the possible threats that could have a negative impact on human factors in the system. TEM assumes that active threats could lead to increased personnel errors and, when compared to ADREP, TEM is more concise.

 

Human Factor Analysis and Classification System – HFACS

HFACS has the premier goal to support accident analyzing processes by discovering human factor element roles and causes directly linked to the event which later could influence accident recognition. HFACS includes four failure levels, each of these four is further divided into lower levels or categories/sub-categories.

  • Unsafe Acts consisting of Errors and Violations
  • Organizational Influences
  • Unsafe Supervisions
  • Precondition for Unsafe Acts failure levels

 

Conclusion

Taxonomies are a supporting tool in aviation reporting systems which enable airlines to better understand, define, and categorize reported events. Enabling airline personnel to properly describe and evaluate safety data is the true purpose and benefit of taxonomies.

Although taxonomies are standardized, taxonomies are most impactful when customized to meet the needs of each individual organization. It is important for airlines to adapt and modify their taxonomies according to their operation. Standard taxonomies are a great starting point because they tend to incorporate industry overlaps in common safety event descriptors, but they would not be able to fully capture all phrases or descriptions that are relevant to each airline.

For these reasons, the ProSafeT team has concluded that providing an SMS platform with the ability to reflect an airline’s particular taxonomy, and modify it as its operations change, is not just helpful but necessary for a successful safety program.