The newly-enacted Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 5 Safety Management Systems (SMS) mandate requires many flight operations to have in place a structured SMS to manage safety risks. Compliance with the mandate is made easier by having a well-established SMS already in place, along with a valued safety partner to help manage and refine that plan.
For Part 135 charter operator and aircraft management firm Silver Air, meeting the requirements of the FAA mandate was a completely painless process, thanks to their partnership with WYVERN. The company is an accredited WYVERN Wingman PRO operator, which company CEO Jason Middleton said gave the company a head start.
“WYVERN came in and presented a road map to compliance,” he added. “Because we already operated under an established and comprehensive SMS, we were already 95 percent of the way there. They coached us through where we needed to be in six months, nine months and carved out the timeline.
“I really appreciated that,” he continued. “They worked with us; not for us or against us.”
The result, added Silver Air Director of Safety and Organizational Development Hansford Smith, was largely business as usual. “Our operation was already focused on continuous group improvement long before the mandate went into effect,” he added. “Part 5 really hasn’t shaped any significant changes for Silver Air because our SMS already met the spirit and intent of the mandate.”
Achieving Wingman PRO accreditation required Silver Air to demonstrate effectiveness in all areas of SMS, excellence in the addressing of Human Factors and Organizational Safety Culture and continuous conformity to international standards, validated through an internal audit program – all tenets the FAA emphasized in mandating SMS for all Part 135 operators, as well as Part 91.147 air tour operators and certain Part 21 certificate holders.
That said, Middleton stressed that maintaining the safest operation possible requires going beyond rote compliance with regulations. “Maintaining paperwork and ensuring we have 10 years of records for the fueling service in Waco, TX doesn’t necessarily make you safer,” he emphasized. “It just makes you look busy.”
Sharing Data to Improve the Industry
Rather, Middleton believes the best way for operators like Silver Air to meet the spirit and intent of the Part 5 SMS mandate includes learning from the experiences of others across the industry.
“Our industry works in a vacuum,” he explained. “Operations don’t talk with each other about what we’re doing right – or, especially, maybe what we need to do better – except when we either have people auditing us, or when we’re in front of the FAA. It’s all kept proprietary to the operator.
“That is a failure of the industry,” he continued. “What WYVERN has done is compile this information at a high level, de-identified, keeping all necessary boundaries in place while sharing trending issues, whether they be taxiway incursions, ground handling incidents, runway excursions, etc.”
Middleton likened bringing WYVERN onboard to manage Silver Air’s SMS to utilizing a qualified and professional flight planning service on international flights. “We could arrange the permits, overflights and all the other complexities in house, and we’d get it done,” he added. “But we wouldn’t be that great at it.
“I’m a massive fan of bringing in the right people for the right job,” Middleton continued. “Our Flight Operations team absolutely could have brought together our SMS themselves and it would have complied with all the requirements of Part 5, but it may not have been the absolute best system we could have. There are experts in all these things within all areas of aviation.”
Utilizing the specialized services of WYVERN, including aggregation of safety data nationwide, allows Silver Air to maintain clear focus on being a safe and professional flight operation.
“I want to learn not only from our operations, but from others’ as well,” he said. “It’s a huge win for safety when we all can avoid a problem in the future by understanding what has happened in the past.”
That level of information provides critical, invaluable insights that yield real benefits for operators like Silver Air. While the company also utilizes other safety audit providers, “WYVERN is really the core foundation of our safety system,” Middleton concluded. “They are a tremendous asset for us and all operators utilizing their services.”
To learn more about partnering with WYVERN, visit wyvernltd.com or call +1-92-WINGMAN-1.
Article written by Rob Finfrock, Contributor.
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