Resistance to requiring safety management systems (SMS) and analyzing data from routine flight operations was obvious in comments from some business aircraft operators during April conferences in Canada and the United States. Yet many attendees were intrigued by the prospect of voluntarily resolving familiar but intractable safety issues through these methods — even one concept that also would integrate flight simulator data into SMS.
“Forty years ago … accident prevention was based largely upon having investigators … running out to a debris field, sifting through the wreckage and collecting all the broken parts and pieces [to] literally try to link together … the chain of events, what caused the accident,” said Steve Charbonneau, senior manager of training and standards, Altria, and chairman of the steering committee for C-FOQA Centerline, an industry initiative that collects and analyzes de-identified corporate flight operational quality assurance (C-FOQA) data. “Tod…
