NBAA SMS Class

[Adios]

I Just wanted to give a heads up for anyone who wishes to spend $1500 on any upcomimg NBAA SMS class. I attended the class in HOU last week along with many other well known corporate operators and we were all very disappointed with the 3 day class. It was Not worth the money so make sure you do your homework and are well briefed before attending.

 

[Gulfstream 200]

I Just wanted to give a heads up for anyone who wishes to spend $1500 on any upcomimg NBAA SMS class. I attended the class in HOU last week along with many other well known corporate operators and we were all very disappointed with the 3 day class. It was Not worth the money so make sure you do your homework and are well briefed before attending.

Thanks for that!

The entire SMS idea is a joke....the only ones who think otherwise are all the newly minted "consulatants" that will come in and tell you how much it will benefit your department.

Instead of hiring smart people, paying them well, and insisting they operate by industry accepted guidelines you now need a "SMS"

 

[TransMach]

Thanks for that!

The entire SMS idea is a joke....the only ones who think otherwise are all the newly minted "consulatants" that will come in and tell you how much it will benefit your department.

Instead of hiring smart people, paying them well, and insisting they operate by industry accepted guidelines you now need a "SMS"

Yup, what he said X2 ...

TransMach

 

[Brett Hull]

I heard the SMS described as a solution that was created in search of a problem.

 

[Adios]

Gulf I couldn't agree more with you, but when your "Dumb Boss" buys a $7K prism SMS manual and then asks you to be the SMS Manager what ya do? I look at it this way....if I can get this thing up and going then just maybe I can get out of the flying business and get a real J.O.B.

 

[Gulfstream 200]

Gulf I couldn't agree more with you, but when your "Dumb Boss" buys a $7K prism SMS manual and then asks you to be the SMS Manager what ya do? I look at it this way....if I can get this thing up and going then just maybe I can get out of the flying business and get a real J.O.B.

Problem with real jobs is they are Monday-Friday. I'm just not ready for that just yet...

Oh I know SMS/ISBAO/EUETS etc is coming, I just think its a huge joke. We will buy whatever SMS etc we need to comply and throw it on the shelf. Its just another budget item.

As far as NBAAs role, just ask about the need for an SMS on their pathetic Airmail system and watch how many people respond with how important SMS is...in fact, they are mostly experts who will happily come in and "manage" and "consult" you on an SMS! - just send them an email!...ever ask what is required to be an ISBAO/SMS "certified" auditor? a 12hr class?

No thanks...we will continue to run a very safe and efficient operation by hiring good people. Imagine that.

I have witnessed big department SMS and all the laughable (painful?) time it consumes. It's also comical to hear the kool aid drinkers try and explain why its the future and we need to embrace it...Does some one (Chief Pilot/DO?) have to deal with what is required and check the boxes? sure...but lets not kid ourselves into thinking this is a huge Revelation.

Of course you do whatever your boss wants to check this box, but the question still remains.....WHY?

 

[PC12Cowboy]

SMS???? ok I give

 

[G4G5]

SMS is Safety Management System

Here's what the issue is:
"The International Civil Aviation Organization Standards found in Annex 6, Part 2 specify that a SMS requirement be incorporated into national safety regulations for operators of non-commercial aircraft over 12,500 pounds maximum takeoff weight or turbojet powered aircraft. The compliance date for these standards is November 2010. Annex 6 Part 1 of the ICAO Standards required compliance beginning on January 1, 2009 for commercial operators."

I went to the SMS class at TEB last month and here's what I got out of it.
The Europeans are all over the place. Easa is not going to take over until 2012, so until then each country's regulations apply. Effective 11/18/2010, the French could make it mandatory and do a ramp/SAFA check and hold you on the ground until you get one. The UK may not, it's up until the individual country until EASA takes over. Bottom line is it's coming so why wait to get one?

The US has said that it will wait until 2013 until we decide what to do, no surprise here. IMHO, we will wait until EASA has told us what to do. The FAA has no money and the Europeans are driving the bus and they are all about job creation whether it be ISBAO and SMS audits or EUETS fee's.

The Canadians came out last week and said that they won't require an SMS for foreign registered aircraft. The Bermudians already require it for aircraft registered in Bermuda so as of 11/2010, IMHO they will want one for foreign operators too.

We are in a gray area. If you never leave the USA then don't worry about until 2013. If you travel internationally then, it depends upon the country the you are visiting but as of November any ICAO registered country has the right to enforce an SMS.

If you try to do it on your own then who do you get to approve it?
Problem is that the FAA has NO real guidance on what to do (they don't care because they have told the world we will get to it in 2013). So your local FSDO can not approve it.

My suggestion is to purchase the ISBAO SMS manual and fill in the blanks. It's ICAO approved and should be accepted by all ICAO countries. Then either throw it up on the shelve or start playing the big flt dept game.

 

[PC12Cowboy]

thankssss G4G5

 

[gear_guy]

That's only half. The EU will soon track your carbon output and then promptly mail them a check for the damages. You will have to register with an EU country. Apparently you can now fix "climate change" with $$$$$.

I give!

 

[Fblowjets]

So if your international flying consist of Canada a few times a year and the Bahamas a few times a year, do we have to comply by end of year? I cannot get find a straight answer. This program is designed to bleed more money out of flight departments.

 

[G4G5]

Canada has come out and said that they will not enforce an sms on foreign registered aircraft. Not sure about the Bahamas

 

[jet2work]

Another thing to watch out for during the auditing process is hiring an auditor that also (conveniently enough) runs an aircraft management business. At some point they will end up face to face with your Boss' Boss or your CEO to report their findings. That's when you run the risk of them telling the boss how they could do it more cost effectively by combining your aircraft on their insurance, negotiating fuel purchases, making the crews independent contractors, and putting the aircraft on their 135 for some charter revenue. We all know that it's BS, but where do you think these "consultants" come from?

 

[Gulfstream 200]

Another thing to watch out for during the auditing process is hiring an auditor that also (conveniently enough) runs an aircraft management business. At some point they will end up face to face with your Boss' Boss or your CEO to report their findings. That's when you run the risk of them telling the boss how they could do it more cost effectively by combining your aircraft on their insurance, negotiating fuel purchases, making the crews independent contractors, and putting the aircraft on their 135 for some charter revenue. We all know that it's BS, but where do you think these "consultants" come from?

agree 100%.

"auditors" and "consultants".....often industry flunkies with NO interest in your well being.

If I get one more phone call from some scumbag 135 outfit who will "manage" our aircraft for free I might lose it!!

 

[bbwest]

Well gentlemen, not sure what type of operation you work for but my bet is that if you dont have a functional safety program (SMS), you need it more than you know. Ask the folks at NASCAR if they wish they'd have had one sooner.

 

[yfly]

Well gentlemen, not sure what type of operation you work for but my bet is that if you dont have a functional safety program (SMS), you need it more than you know. Ask the folks at NASCAR if they wish they'd have had one sooner.

Don't confuse having a Safety Management System with using a Safety Management System. Having one doesn't make anyone safer and I think requiring a system where a system is not wanted won't make operations any safer.

There were plenty of FARs and industry accepted procedures and guidelines already in existence that would have prevented the NASCAR accident, if only they were followed. I don't think a fancy manual would have prevented the decision making process in motion before this accident. My humble opinion.

I just wish I was smart enough to invent a "standard" ie. IS-BAO that I could charge people a hefty fee to implement.

 

[Gulfstream 200]

Well gentlemen, not sure what type of operation you work for but my bet is that if you dont have a functional safety program (SMS), you need it more than you know. Ask the folks at NASCAR if they wish they'd have had one sooner.

Ah yes....an SMS would have prevented this, huh?

As stated above, how about following FARs and standard industry practices? How about running a department run by SOPs that are accepted/expected right up to the top.

Many have been doing this long before SMS, some never have and never will - SMS or not.

Do a handful of wannabe manager pilots spending 6 months and thousands of dollars putting together some ISBAO manuals make you feel safe? We will all play the game, but lets not kid ourselves into thinking an SMS will do anything for the average small flight department.

At the end of the day It's the quality, well paid people you have making the decisions in the cockpit and who are backed by managers with spines that make an operation run safe, not a fancy certificate on the wall that gets prepped by some "consultant" and dusted off by some office clown.

 

[AeroDork]

...who are backed by managers with spines....

Which is exactly what this industry is desperately short of and why we're at this point now. Because a bunch of ninnies have been promoted to chief pilot and don't want to risk anything by "rocking the boat" by ever saying no to the big guy.

Someone said the Tim Horton's global express accident in Canada would not have happened if they had a SMS in place. Really? They needed a matrix to tell them that ducking below the papi and landing a global on a 4800' contaminated runway was a bad idea?

 

[BoilerUP]

They needed a matrix to tell them that ducking below the papi and landing a global on a 4800' contaminated runway was a bad idea?

What, you don't think a multi-page pre-departure safety evaluation, completed prior to every leg, would increase safety of flight?

 

[bbwest]

I say again, ask the NASCAR guys if having an operable SMS would have prevented the mishap.

We are a society of rules and procedures. Corporate Aviation is the last bastion of aviation with few of those. It's always interesting to fly w the folks who think they dont need them. I submit again, they are the very ones who need them the most.

As SMS is not foolproof. It still doesnt take the human out of the equation. It provides the human rules and guidelines under which to operate. It provides humans with a means of identifying problems and correcting issues so that the next human doesnt have to relive the same risk.

All 121 operations have safety programs. All 135 operators have safety programs. As 91 operators we have no dispatchers, no company weather folks, most often on our own. But we are better than all of those guys? We don't need what they need?

I say again, it's exactly the folks who think they are above the SMS, who think it's crap, who need it the most.

 

[wrxpilot]

Another thing to watch out for during the auditing process is hiring an auditor that also (conveniently enough) runs an aircraft management business. At some point they will end up face to face with your Boss' Boss or your CEO to report their findings. That's when you run the risk of them telling the boss how they could do it more cost effectively by combining your aircraft on their insurance, negotiating fuel purchases, making the crews independent contractors, and putting the aircraft on their 135 for some charter revenue. We all know that it's BS, but where do you think these "consultants" come from?

We just dealt with that EXACT situation in our little flight dept with an auditor... Within five minutes of meeting the auditor, he started asking me non-pertinent questions about where the crew lived (two of them commute to the airplane). He then said he was available as a Captain - WTF? Dude, you are here to do an audit for the bank! Not try to weasel your way into a job.

Later, he told the chief pilot that he wanted to talk to the owner about our service contract and aircraft management. The CP essentially told him to eff himself, and we've reported him to the bank. Very unprofessional...

The funny part is that he was a recently retired airline pilot from United. I try not to view these retired airline pilots in a bad light with regards to corporate ops, but crap like this makes you wonder.

 

[Gulfstream 200]

I say again, ask the NASCAR guys if having an operable SMS would have prevented the mishap.

We are a society of rules and procedures. Corporate Aviation is the last bastion of aviation with few of those. It's always interesting to fly w the folks who think they dont need them. I submit again, they are the very ones who need them the most.

As SMS is not foolproof. It still doesnt take the human out of the equation. It provides the human rules and guidelines under which to operate. It provides humans with a means of identifying problems and correcting issues so that the next human doesnt have to relive the same risk.

All 121 operations have safety programs. All 135 operators have safety programs. As 91 operators we have no dispatchers, no company weather folks, most often on our own. But we are better than all of those guys? We don't need what they need?

I say again, it's exactly the folks who think they are above the SMS, who think it's crap, who need it the most.

Its sounds to me, again, like you are trying to take people with the lowest regards for rules and standards and assuming they will change their ways with a 5K manual on the shelf.

Sorry....cant fix stupid, no matter who they work for.

 

[bbwest]

I couldn't agree more with the last comment. If stupid doesnt realize his limitations how do you identify his issue up the chain? The word of mouth stuff has little to no accountability. An SMS with a function hazard identification program and or an anonymous hazard identification program forces the issue to be dealt with.

A truly functional safety program forces the stupid issue to be dealt with.

Bombardier Safety Standown and Tony Kern's last book had some great stuff on the stupid's among us.

WRXpilot's comments about the auditor looking for a job is exactly what's great about this forum. The retired United auditor looking for a job needs to be permanantly retired. We have an audit coming up. No airline guys or former airline guys welcome. They dont live in our world. What would a guy like that really know about business aviation outside of the cockpit door? Thanks for IDing someone like that!

 

[FO4life]

+1 Thank YOU. Even if you run the SMS for a captain before a flight doesn't mean he/she will not ball it up in flames at the end!

 

[bbwest]

SMS a joke? Really?

Thanks for that!

The entire SMS idea is a joke....the only ones who think otherwise are all the newly minted "consulatants" that will come in and tell you how much it will benefit your department.

Instead of hiring smart people, paying them well, and insisting they operate by industry accepted guidelines you now need a "SMS"

So G-200 and the clowns like him think they are smarter than Dr Tony Kern, Ed Bolen, John Sheehan and a hundred other leaders out there in business aviation.

Safety programs work - period. So Southwest, Delta, United, Net Jets, Pepsico, Home Depot, Exxon, and nearly every quality flight department out there - G200 says they are all wrong and he is right? If you worked in my flight dept and spouted nonsense like that I'd ask you to seek employment elsewhere.

 

[BoilerUP]

The concept of SMS is good - the execution of SMS, however, has been piss-poor.

There's absolutely nothing an SMS offers in terms of operational risk mitigation that routine, frank, open discussions between department pilots & department management cannot achieve. The "its the same thing you're already doing, just documented" chorus rings a bit hollow to some, because if we're already operating using industry best practices and have an unblemished safety record doing what we've been doing for years, what's the benefit of putting it on paper? What and where is the need, other than acheiving regulatory compliance?

You can have the world's bestest risk matrix and most thorough SMS manual and it'll do absolutely nothing to address pilot performance issues that are the primary driver of incidents/accidents...like SWA overruning at MDW (why did the PIC steer toward the grass and not the EMAS?), Delta landing on a taxiway, NWA playing on laptops and overflying their destination, etc.

Additionally, the bestest risk matrix & SMS manual in the world won't do anything for a department unless an operation, from the lowest/most junior flight department employee to the CEO of the corporation, buys into a sea change in culture that an SMS requires in order to truly be effective.

Otherwise, its little more than another manual on the shelf and maybe a "formal" step in the preflight process, consuming more time & resources than the same risk analysis most professional pilots do anyway (if only out of self-preservation).

You don't need to have an Safety Management System to operate a safe, professional flight department - thousands of departments prove this on a daily basis. Could it improve an operation that's already good? Perhaps...but its not necessary. And anybody who claims it is likely has an economic stake in selling that perspective.

 

[Gulfstream 200]

So G-200 and the clowns like him think they are smarter than Dr Tony Kern, Ed Bolen, John Sheehan and a hundred other leaders out there in business aviation.

Safety programs work - period. So Southwest, Delta, United, Net Jets, Pepsico, Home Depot, Exxon, and nearly every quality flight department out there - G200 says they are all wrong and he is right? If you worked in my flight dept and spouted nonsense like that I'd ask you to seek employment elsewhere.

If those are your ideas of industry leaders, you are right, I have no desire to work in YOUR flight department...no worries there.

You see, amazingly enough, we were safe long before ISBAO gave us a certificate. Shocking huh? Maybe it's because we hire good, experienced people, treat and pay them well, and expect them to act like professionals every single time they come to work? We have managers with spines. I guess that concept was lost in favor of needing a risk analysis of something (everything?) or maybe yet another Safety Committee meeting? or a YES MAN manager looking for another pat on the head?

Don't kid yourself, the ones who fall into leadership roles and department manager roles in this business are sometimes the least qualified, sackless, socially challenged people you will meet. A shiny SMS on the shelf and a $10,000 plaque in the hall makes up for mediocre talent at plenty of departments. Others are top notch, and sure they have an SMS. Just another item checked off to help the department be as good as it can be.....but quality and a SMS have very little (if anything) to do with each other.

I don't care to see the plaques and the manuals, all I need to do is take a good look at the guy in charge of a department and see how he treats his people, stands up for his people, and what kind of respect he gets when he turns his back. That will tell me everything I need to know (good or bad, SMS or not) Everyone knows the rules, everyone has the manuals, now show me how they are executed.

Again, LMAO at quality department = SMS....Boiler Up is right., you must be selling the crap like so many others out there.

 

[Godfather]

I agree with Boiler UP and G200!

It's funny that this same discussion came up with my Flight Dept. Manager the other day. He asked if I was interested in being the Safety Guru/SMS Manager? He was pretty serious as he is trying to take a little off of his responsibility plate. He's our Safety guy for now but this SMS and Safety/Risk Management Stuff is getting to be too much for one guy to handle. Guess, I'll add Safety man/SMS Manager to my resume. I really have no Safety experience except as a flight crew member but you always have to crawl before walking.

With this in mind, I have some questions for anyone that would like to take a stab at this.

1. Is the NBAA the only ones doing the training/certification for US operators?

2. Does the NBAA course satisfy the JAA and other regulatory agencies?

3. How often do SMS Programs required audits?

4. How much more $$$ should a Safety Man make if he also flies? How much if he is just the Manager with no additional duties or responsibilities?

5. How much more $$$ will be required to maintain the SMS compliance and what are the typical annual ops costs with SMS?

either post here or PM me. thanks

 

[Gulfstream 200]

1. Is the NBAA the only ones doing the training/certification for US operators?

2. Does the NBAA course satisfy the JAA and other regulatory agencies?

3. How often do SMS Programs required audits?

4. How much more $$$ should a Safety Man make if he also flies? How much if he is just the Manager with no additional duties or responsibilities?

5. How much more $$$ will be required to maintain the SMS compliance and what are the typical annual ops costs with SMS?

either post here or PM me. thanks

1/2 - You don't need to pay for SMS training. Get the ISBAO standard and create your own SMS based on what you already do, its pretty easy...or pay someone to do it all if you don't have time or don't have an industry typical ops manual, etc. I cant see the benefit to a small department doing outside SMS "training" We have a training schedule and in it is periodic internal SMS training/review. You want to get ISBAO certified/registered to satisfy any regulatory agencies (still not clear IMO)

3. Every 2 years (Stage I,II,III?)

4. I suspect that is entirely up to you to negotiate, but it also sounds like you just added another title and little/no extra pay, LOL.

5. There are no annual ops costs that I can think of with a SMS? Its honestly nothing different than you are likely doing right now. I found its value in that it forced us to get a little more organized. In just about every instance we already met or exceeded the "standards" - as I bet most decent outfits do. All you would need to budget in is your audits or what you may pay someone to manage it (I suspect that may be you) Prices vary widely on audits.

 

[Godfather]

Thanks G200. We'll see what happens...wish me luck!

FYI, We have a SMS in play, but not yet IBAC certified which is the next step. I guess that is where the audits come in.

One more question on the audits. Which outside audit firm to use? Wyvern, FSI, SH&E or just work with IBAC itself. IBAC's website with the eLearning Course is so much easier to use and educate yourself with IMO.