During the COVID-19 lockdown our team with Ing. Victor Manuel del Castillo and Daniel Bustamante made an enormous effort in creating 100 questions for aviation safety quiz. We bring to you our interview with these two gentlemen.
The Quiz was held in five sessions across May and June and attracted over 100 participants over the world. Ing. Victor Manuel del Castillo and Daniel Bustamante, both from Mexican company SMS Mexico, were the creators of astonishing 100 questions served over 5 quizzes to our participants.
1. What inspired you to make 100 questions?
VMDC: Training experts say that in a course the one who learns the most is the instructor; Looking for the best questions for the Quiz has motivated me to read more and analyze the possible consequences of the questions to the participants (just what happened), each person has a different perception of things, events, hazards, people and risk management. Believe me, selecting the questions for our quiz took up a lot of time and analysis. I don’t regret it, I keep learning.
Daniel: There is no more exciting inspiration than being able to promote safety in aviation, knowing that with these questions we can generate knowledge, recall essential and main concepts to achieve an efficient implementation of safety systems in each aviation organization.
Ing. Victor Manuel del Castillo working on aviation safety quiz questions
2. Do you think the quiz helped to improve the knowledge of aviation safety experts?
VMDC: Our experience for more than 16 years in the SMS has taught us that the knowledge and mastery of this subject is very volatile and constantly demands reinforcement and updating. Among the participants in our Quiz we had professionals of all levels, which helped us to have different perspectives and perceptions of a subject that apparently seems easy, but in reality it is complicated.
From the results obtained that can be found at www.voice.inxelo.aero and from comments through other means, we detected that it was of great help, by the way, some surprises from professionals who in theory should dominate the subject, but the truth is that all we continue to learn a required topic worldwide for the air transport industry from ICAO.
Daniel: Of course, this exercise of ours for experts and non-experts, I am sure that it generated knowledge, as we all know we all learn every hour and even every minute, so this quiz allowed many to know their mistakes and focus on improving weaker areas, while others reinforced their knowledge in different questions. What I am more sure of is that everyone learned, even the experts have flaws.
3. What is your opinion about the final quiz results?
VMDC: The total figures indicate that the average performance was close to 65%, if we analyze the age of SMS in the world is 16 years old, so, I can deduce that we are learning very slowly and that we should speed up the performance of the SMS implementation, on the other hand, with the current pandemic I think we will take a step back in relation to the SMS domain, hopefully I’m wrong.
Daniel: It was not the desired result, since as it could be observed in each quiz result that the performance did not exceed on average 65% of the total hits, showing with these figures that there are sections and certain basic concepts that have not yet been learned. For this reason I invite and motivate our participants to continuously participate in more quizzes so we can together improve the knowledge of each of the participant.
4. What would you like to see on ICARUS Quiz platform in the future?
VMDC: The comments we have received from some participants is to leave the same questions with some adjustments and upload it again in the last quarter of this year with more promotion, seeking to double the number of participants. I am sure that with an early promotion we will achieve the goal.
Daniel: Ability to perform quizzes continuously and internally among those who use the software, that is, through this section the operators who use it can share short and efficient evaluations throughout their organization, allowing immediate results and areas of opportunity to be obtained.
Online preparations for ICARUS Quiz sessions with Daniel Bustamante (top-left) and Ing. Victor Manuel del Castillo (lower part of the screen)
5. Tell us more about your company and what you do?
VMDC: Safety Management System, S.C. was born 16 years ago along with the SMS due to the need of the market to have an organization dedicated to a specific topic, users need to have safety specialists and not an organization that is dedicated to many services as that does not give confidence; Mr. Al Ries in his book “Focus” edited by Mc Graw Hill exposes something interesting: “What happens to a company that dissipates its energy in too many products and services? YOU LOSE YOUR POWER AND ALSO YOUR APPROACH”.
Together with a small team of collaborators we are dedicated solely to the subject of SAFETY in aviation with positive results.
Our courses, seminars, conferences and now webinars have been attended by more than 23,000 aviation professionals worldwide.
My friend and company partner, Ing. Daniel Bustamante will tell you about our “Safety Diagnosis” service.
I do not want to say goodbye to this interview without first thanking the acceptance of our Quiz that reached many operators and congratulating those who achieved the best scores, your comments are always welcome.
Daniel:
The main objective for myself and for being part of the Safety Management System, S. C is to achieve general circle of knowledge and improvements through courses, trainings, among other elements that allow all those interested in safety to learn, promote aviation safety in the world, reduce its accident rates, incidents and safety events that put at risk any operational area, from ramp to flight.
In this great alliance with Safety Management System, S. C we have created the first Operational Safety Assessment in Latin America in which, through a complex system based on ICAO, FAA, AAC’S, ISBAO, IBAC, EASA principles, among other aviation organizations, we generate a check that allows us to identify latent failures, hazards, mitigation measures and even human factors in any organization that are generating a probable accident / incident in the future. This diagnosis is not an audit; it is tangibly a clear identification of how progress is being made in the implementation of an SMS efficiently.
I am very pleased to participate with ICARUS which at the same time is our base platform for Operational Safety Assessment and with this opportunity that was opened to me for participation in the first Safety Quiz in the world. Each question was evaluated by Ing. Victor Manuel del Castillo, a great friend and colleague in the Operational Safety Assessment, so this in turn allowed us to evaluate our knowledge.
Simply thank you for the opportunity and we hope to participate again with ICARUS in any of its projects that promote safety.
