A STAMP Based Approach to Redesigning Airline Safety Management Systems

Aviation is a complex socio-technical system that have connected emerging properties to ensure safety and reliability. When systems, such as aviation, become labeled as “extremely safe”, organizations tend to enact policy or requirements purely based on assumptions of human behavior. Organizational approaches to safety in airline SMS are outlined under Safety-I and Safety-II mindsets that assume “Work-as-Imagined” is the only correct method for performing a task and does not account for variability. Safety-I and Safety-II organizations do not analyze the changes in system states, environment, and other degradations of systems while creating assumptions that accidents are caused from deviation of work-as-imagined. Gaps that exist in simple causality models and accident investigations in airlines create limitations in identifying critical leading indicators and conducting proper risk management. Often corporate leadership has flawed mental models of safety from these limitations due to political gain and biases that further affect decision making, risk management, and the outcome of safety investigations. These corporate mental models result in gaps in an organization’s aviation Safety Management System (SMS), management teams’ over-reliability of safety, and false assumptions of human behavior. This research paper explains how modern airlines have structured their SMS under Safety-I and Safety-II methodologies and applies a theoretical application of incorporating STAMP at an organizational level into airline SMS to prevent safety gaps in organizational SMS.