Air safety investigator working for an airline?

Question

As an air safety investigator working for an airline, their findings will often have a direct financial impact on company operations. What might be the types of impediments that they may encounter that could affect the outcomes of their investigations? How can these impediments be managed?

Answer 1

when income or revenues comes first before safety, The airline Bigwigs would remind the safety inspector that his salary comes from revenues if these planes are flying, if not, "Where do we get the payments to pay for your salaries?"

By either going to the owner or the president and explaining  that safety is above all that by doing your job you are saving the company.

Answer 2

The typical management response:  Safety is a fine thing, as long as it doesn't cost too much.

Answer 3

To answer you question airlines are in the business to make money period.  However they are required to work within regulations under Title 49 Part 121.  When it comes to releasing an aircraft to service to make money or pull it from service airline manager will sometimes bend the rules.

Bending a rule is managing violation in the workplace and is a huge human factor problem.  The main reasons for violations are:

· Expectation that rules will have to be bent to get the work done;

· Powerfulness, the feeling that one has the ability and experience to do the job without slavishly following the procedures.

· Seeing the Opportunities that present themselves for short cuts or to do thins “better”:

· Inadequate Work Planning and advance preparation leading to working “on the fly” and solving problems as they arise.  

These four factors allow good prediction of whether people are likely to bend the rules or not.

Violations, then forms one of the major causes of accident in industry.  There is an assumption that people will follow the guidelines and procedures as laid sown in the Safety Management System.  When this assumption is broken the whole basis of the Safety Management System (SMS) is put at risk.

Right now the FAA is real bib on SMS and as you can tell there is a break down in the system, which has put people at risk.  Just using the four factors above it is easy to tell where the problem is.  You may be asking why is a violation a problem?  Human Error and because of them we have major accidents.  There are four types of errors as follows:

· Slips – are benign for the most part often quickly detected and fixed.

· Lapses – forgot to install something

· Mistakes – not doing the right thing

· Violations – worst and most dangerous of all.  They are deliberate intention not to follow safety or other procedures, which put everyone at risk.

I would recommend you Google or Yahoo Human Factors as this will tell help you understand the person making the call and why it will fail and cost the company money.