Topic · SMS fundamentals
SMS fundamentals: what an aviation SMS is, and how to run one
The four components, the manual, the evidence an auditor asks for, and moving off spreadsheets.
What is an aviation SMS?
A safety management system is the organised way an aviation operator finds hazards, assesses and controls their risk, checks that the controls work and promotes safety. ICAO Annex 19 sets out its four components: safety policy and objectives, safety risk management, safety assurance and safety promotion.
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SMS fundamentals
15 articles in SMS fundamentals, newest first
- SMS Audit Evidence: What Auditors Actually Ask ForThe evidence an SMS audit requires, mapped element by element to the artefact that answers it, the four opening questions, and where each answer lives.
- What Happens After an Occurrence Report: The Six StagesOne ramp occurrence traced from intake to board decision: classification, risk band, barrier assessment, indicator, corrective action and the recorded decision.
- How to Structure an SMS Manual (and What Regulators Actually Check)An SMS manual describes a system, and inspectors check the system. The six things it must establish, a chapter skeleton, and what regulators look for.
- What Is a FRAT (Flight Risk Assessment Tool)?A FRAT turns one flight's risks into a single pre-flight score with go, caution and no-go bands. How a flight risk assessment tool works, and where it stops.
- What Is ICAO Doc 9859? The Safety Management Manual, ExplainedICAO Doc 9859, the Safety Management Manual, is the implementation guidance behind Annex 19. Read it as design guidance for a working SMS, not text to copy.
- Hazard vs Risk in Aviation: What Is the Difference?A hazard is a condition with potential; a risk is the assessed severity and probability of a consequence. Worked examples and the hazard, risk, barrier chain.
- Aviation Risk Matrix Explained: Severity, Probability, TolerabilityThe ICAO 5x5 risk matrix, severity by probability. Read the tolerability regions, defend an assessment, avoid severity inflation, treat the cell as an input.
- The Four Components of an Aviation SMSSafety Policy, Risk Management, Assurance and Promotion: the four SMS components, the 12 elements, what each produces and how one occurrence uses all four.
- What Is a Safety Management System in Aviation?A safety management system is the organised, four-component way an operator manages safety risk. What an SMS is, who needs one, and what working looks like.
- Closing the Just-Culture Loop: From Confidential Report to De-Identified BulletinMost platforms stop at the report. The closed loop: confidential intake, investigation, a de-identified bulletin and feedback, without exposing the reporter.
- ICAO Annex 13 Crisis Response in Your System of RecordDeclare an event, pick the type, and deploy a role-laned, dependency-sequenced response task board, with the occurrence and investigation already wired in.
- The Closure Gate, Not the Checkbox: Defensible-by-Construction SafetyA degraded barrier needs a linked corrective action that passes an effectiveness check before the record can close. Proven by a 13-of-13 scenario suite.
- The Investigation Methods Most Tools Document, eAviora ComputesHFACS, SHELL, Fishbone, 5-Why and bow-tie, drawn as working surfaces rather than PDFs: an AI first pass a person validates, each with its own renderer.
- Implementing ICAO Annex 19 SMS in 90 daysA practical roadmap for standing up an SMS against ICAO Annex 19: what to ship in days 0-30, 31-60 and 61-90, and the traps that quietly add nine months.
- Just Culture in five questionsA decision framework for the moment after a frontline error: five questions, the substitution test, and what Just Culture is not. Reason, Dekker, EU 376/2014.
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