Aircraft operators cannot be sure their pilots comply with standard operating procedures (SOPs) without a safety management system (SMS) and flight data monitoring (FDM), Capt. David Lawrence, senior aviation accident investigator for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), told a Flight Safety Foundation safety seminar on Wednesday.
Lawrence told the 66th annual Business Aviation Safety Summit (BASS) that after an accident, NTSB investigators regularly ask operators and the assigned U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) principal operations inspectors how they know if the pilots are following SOPs. Without SMS or FDM, they have no way of knowing, Lawrence said, adding that the common problem is that “nobody knows what’s going on once the airplane leaves the airport.”
Nevertheless, he said, “every operator we talk to after an accident says, ‘I thought we were safe.’”
Data have shown that pilots who deviate from SOPs are three times more likely …
