Aviation Human Factors and SMS: The Contribution of a Generation

The last twenty-five years are arguably the period when the most significant change took place in international civil aviation as a whole. Progress in the post-WWII Fifties, the introduction of the jet engine in the Sixties, and the early technology in the Seventies effectively and efficiently supported safety and the service delivery needs of a slow-growing and largely static system. However, from the Eighties onwards, aviation changed from a craft-based and relatively small service to a massive transportation system that has become an essential component of the fabric of contemporary society. This book builds upon the need to preserve international civil aviation's corporate memory about facts and people, in the face of ever-constant and often radical change, and the de-personalization of aviation. This is achieved by providing a roadmap of key institutional and operational events that, since the mid-Eighties, have shaped aviation safety thinking into the present-day paradigm, by redeeming failures and revisiting successes, by associating each "fork in the road" to a specific shift in prevailing paradigm and, most importantly, by crediting individuals and teams without whose unique contribution the shifts in paradigms would not have been achieved. The journey and its forks are dissociated and distanced from opinion, supported by documentary evidence of historical significance - in many cases unavailable today - to which the author had access due to the privilege of having served with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) during the historical period under scrutiny. Concluding the book, and bringing its coverage right up to date, are sections dedicated to safety management systems (SMS) and the State Safety Programme (SSP), as well as the author's view on what lies ahead.