Safety management systems (SMSs) are an essential component of the aviation industry. Throughout the history of aviation, safety measures evolved from crew resource management aimed at improving communication between the crew members to the contemporary SMSs (Petitt, 2017). In order to continuously develop and improve the existing SMSs, sufficient information on their effectiveness is necessary. Thus, the research question for this study is whether the available technology and regulations improve SMSs in airlines/airports.
There can be various ways of approaching SMSs in the aviation industry, and assessing whether the crews are able to follow established procedures and successfully use existing technology to increase safety is one of them. As noted by Petitt (2017), training challenges are still among the most notable constraints involved in improving and maintaining a safety culture in the industry. This tendency points to the importance of human error as a factor in causing aviation accidents – and, by extension, to the importance of sufficient training to prevent it.
The independent variable for this study is sufficient training for the implementation of existing regulations and technology. Petitt (2017) points out that tracking crew performance is an essential component of assessing the effectiveness of training. Advanced Qualification Program (AQP) was a shift from “traditional processes where a pilot was trained and checked on individual performance” to the assessment of crew performance as a whole (Petitt, 2017, p. 46). For the purpose of this study, the independent variable will be measured by the crew progress in completing AQP – for the crews that have just begun AQP and for the crews that have completed it.
The most significant dependent variable for this study is aviation safety. Other dependent variables include the crew’s psychological and emotional state and the ability to respond to threats in a timely fashion. These variables will be measured through a number of simulated landings. Aviation safety will be measured by the number of severe mistakes made during the landing simulations. Response time tests will measure the ability to react to the emerging threats in a timely fashion, and pulse measurement will account for the crew’s emotional and psychological state. These methods are appropriate, as they allow a more direct measurement compared to the usual measuring tools such as the Commercial Aviation Safety Survey (CASS) and Flight Management Attitude Questionnaire (FMAQ) (Kim & Choi, 2016). The hypothesis for this study is that the crew training in technology and regulations demonstrates a correlation with increased aviation safety, better response time, and a more stable emotional and psychological state. Correspondingly, the null hypothesis is that there is no evident correlation between crew training in technology and regulations, aviation safety, response time, and the crew’s emotional and psychological state.
The population for this study would be the crews passing or having passed their AQP training. The ideal sample size would be around 100 to 150 crews, as most studies evaluating safety training and safety culture in the aviation industry involve from 200 to 300 pilots (Kim & Choi, 2016). This sample size should be representative enough to base conclusions on it, but still small enough to use without considerable difficulty.
To summarize, this study aims to establish whether the available technology and regulations improve SMSs in airlines/airports. It will do so by measuring aviation safety, reaction time, and emotional and psychological state of individual crews who have or have not completed their AQP training. Measurements will rely on landing simulations combined with pulse measurement and response time tests rather than questionnaires.
References
Kim. D. H., & Choi, J. Y. (2016). Measuring safety culture to promote aviation safety culture. Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea, 35(2), 111-123.
Petitt, K. (2017). SMS, safety culture, and the four pillars of safety applied to airline pilot training: NextGen demands to improve safety. International Journal of Aviation Systems, Operations and Training, 4(2), 45-61.