Traditionally in the aviation environment when someone makes a mistake, an omission, a forgetfulness or any natural deviation (that is, he does not do it on purpose) he is blamed, punished, pointed out and even fired from his job. These actions of the reactive type are simple to carry out and even satisfactory without a thorough analysis like techniques such as the root cause, statistics, etc.
With the new approach offered by the Safety Management System, this reactive attitude must become proactive and predictive, let’s analyze:
Let us suppose that an aviation technician makes an error when carrying out a maintenance activity in an aircraft and the organization acts in a reactive way firing the aviation technician, with the new approach of the SMS it is necessary to analyze if the technician received an adequate and timely training, if his instructor was efficient and taught the course in an appropriate manner, if the subject he has seen was very superficial, if evaluations were made before and after the course, if he asked or even more if he was left to ask, if he was satisfied with his instruction and so on.
The above mentioned is only part of the process, but there are other variables that must be considered before making a final decision attributable only to the person who made the involuntary error; for the above “In modern thinking about safety, human error is the starting point instead of the final point”.
