Consider the "harmless" workaround currently residing in your operation. It’s that one step you skip because it feels redundant, or the checklist item you verify from memory because you’ve done it a thousand times. If an investigator were standing over your shoulder today, would you justify it with pride, or with an excuse? We don’t call these deviations "violations." We call them "efficiency," "experience," or "the way things actually get done." But every time a shortcut is

I want to talk about one of the most overlooked roles in a flight department: the scheduler. It’s not a job many people set out to do. In fact, when I recently spoke with a large group of schedulers, most said they landed in the role by circumstance, not intention. Very few had formal dispatcher training, which is typical outside of major commercial operations. Yet despite that, they’re often the first line of defense when things get complicated. And things get complicated fa

Aviation organizations often say they want more safety data, but one of the most valuable sources is frequently underutilized: voluntary reporting through ASAP (Aviation Safety Action Program). ASAP is designed to capture what traditional safety systems often miss, including human error, procedural drift, and operational pressures that don’t always result in an event but carry significant risk. When participation is strong, ASAP becomes one of the most powerful tools in an SM

In safety management, how we explain behavior matters. When an event occurs, whether it is a missed checklist step, a ground handling error, or a deviation from procedure, our first instinct is often to look at the individual involved. What were they thinking? Why didn’t they follow the process? Were they careless? But decades of psychological research suggest something important. Humans are not very accurate when attributing the causes of other people’s behavior. More often