We’re here! National Airport Safety Week begins today. This year’s program has been designed to remind you of the importance of the efforts required to minimize airside risks and ensure a high level of air safety performance. It’s been said repeatedly that a well-functioning SMS requires a collaborative approach. As a reminder, the theme of the Week is safety culture, i.e. the way in which the members of an organization behave about safety issues.  

Quizzes and competitions!    

This year, the SGS team at ADM Aéroports de Montréal has decided to test your knowledge of aviation safety. Are you a new recruit or an SGS geek? Do you have the right reflexes, the right behaviors?  

Three quizzes (rookie, apprentice and expert levels) are offered, with one winner earning a $500 gift certificate for travel with the airline of his or her choice! These quizzes will test both your knowledge of SMS and your level of participation in this safety culture.  

Lets go! 

Promoting safety  

A safety management system, commonly referred to as SMS, is built around several components. Today, we’re going to look at safety promotion, which aims to reinforce the safety culture within an organization.  

Our employees actively participate in the development of a safety culture within the company. In other words, our safety culture manifests itself on the one hand in proactive behaviors that lead to a reduction in risk, and on the other hand in our reactive learning following incidents to prevent their recurrence.   

Talking about these behaviours, whether during awareness campaigns or simply between colleagues, means taking action to promote safety!  

Our behaviours can be grouped into different sub-cultures:   

• Informed culture, i.e. knowledge of risk factors
• Reporting culture, where members of the organization are encouraged and willing to report mistakes
• Learning culture, or the ability to memorize safety information and procedures, and the capacity to take action
• Flexible culture, i.e. the ability to adapt to changing hazards
• Just culture, in other words the atmosphere of trust where reporting is encouraged and there is a clear distinction between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

 

So, it’s towards a just culture that we direct our efforts, to achieve a balance between the level of tolerance for mistakes and a reasonable punitive culture.  

Why do we need to know all this? Because safety culture has a direct impact on our safety performance. If it’s undervalued, it leads to shortcuts, rule bending and the neglect of important safety issues. All unacceptable situations.  

Without a positive safety culture, an SMS cannot perform properly.  

That’s why we’ve introduced a colorful and attractive visual identity to raise awareness of aviation safety issues within the YUL and YMX communities, and to promote our Safety Management System.