Risk Management, Profit, and the FAA Safety Management System Framework

What are some of the issues with non-compliance with regard to aviation safety management? What are the resultant challenges posed by non-compliance? How does having a quality product affect safety?

In aviation, there are many things that can go wrong, being that it can be a very risk-prone industry if pilots are not trained correctly. In my discussion, I will be talking about all of the simple issues of non-compliance that cause problems of tremendous magnitude. According to the Flight Safety Foundation (2017), the most common non-compliance errors include omitted altitude callouts, checklists performed from memory, failure to execute a mandatory missed approach, a pilot making flight guidance changes while hand flying, and taxi duties that are performed while an airplane is still on the runway. The simplest of things can cause the biggest problems in the aviation industry.

An example of this type of non-compliance involves a Boeing 777-300. "With the airplane at 2,800 ft and established on an instrument landing system approach, air traffic control (ATC) told the crew to maintain 160 kt. Instead, the captain told the first officer (FO), who was the pilot flying, to “ignore it so that the aircraft could be stable by 1,500 [ft],” the description said. The mode control panel was set for 126 kt, and the crew selected 30 degrees of flaps. The FO “offered” to set the airspeed at 160 kt, but the captain “was adamant that [the ATC instruction] was to be ignored,” the description said, adding that at no time did the captain tell ATC his intentions... the error was classified as “intentional speed deviation without ATC clearance/speed too low..." (Flight Safety Foundation, 2017). Standard procedures written in aviation are set for the reason of uniformity and safety in the sky and should not be drifted away from regardless of the type of aircraft or how experienced a pilot someone may be.

According to Debjani Goswami (2020), Quality assurance concerning aviation refers to the entire monitoring structure used to supervise the equipment, systems, and processes to ensure that all the standard requirements set by both ICAO and the State Civil Aviation Regulation bodies are being met at every stage. Functional quality assurance should also provide an inspecting system that can take care of the aircraft maintenance procedures and ensure that the manufacturer’s guidelines are being followed thoroughly. My only recommendation would be to make the regulations stricter. Incorporate stricter checklists, and require pilots to read back commands more competently to tower more for extra conformation and safety purposes to keep surrounding airspace safe, and to maintain the health of pilots. Not having quality products in aviation can severely affect the safety of all pilots. Planes must be kept in airworthy condition in order to safely perform for a pilot and the crew.

References

Goswami, D. (2020, November 11). The importance of Quality Assurance in the aviation industry. Medium. https://medium.com/qualitest/the-importance-of-quality-assurance-in-the-aviation-industry-4e68371bdbb6.

Werfelman, L. (2017, March 13). Intentionally noncompliant. Flight Safety Foundation. https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/intentionally-noncompliant/.