Challenges and potential to improve airline safety and demonstrate resilience through monitoring

Abstract: Rasmussen (1997) shows how it may be possible to go beyond an acceptable safety boundary, and if crossing the boundary is irreversible, an error or an accident may occur. Organizations reside as a specific operating point within three specific boundaries. The three boundaries are: the economic failure boundary, the unacceptable workload boundary, and the boundary of functionally acceptable performance. Safety Management System (SMS) regulations require that airlines look proactively at their operations through a monitoring process with the aim to react, learn, and anticipate before safety issues give rise to the potential of creating an accident. The following thesis will look at airline’s flight operations monitoring system to see if the organization uses Resilience Engineering concepts to enhance their ability to create work processes that are robust yet flexible enough to adapt to varying risk scenarios, and whether the organization is proactive in its approach when faced with disruptions and ongoing economic and production pressures before it goes beyond the boundary of acceptable performance.