Saturday, November 16, 2013

Increasing SOP Compliance

Srinivas Rao | 12:27 AM | | | | | | | | | | | | Best Blogger Tips

In the era where increased incidents and accidents are attributed to flight crew non-adherence to procedures, what can be done to ensure increased SOP compliance?




Standard Operating Procedures(SOP) are a critical component in flight operations and in improving the flight safety. They are intended as a guard against operational errors and help elevate crew performance leading to safe operation of a flight.


First and foremost is that the SOP need to be documented and they need to be seen as relevant to the operating crew, to ensure compliance.
Safety culture or the operating culture should be such that the operating crew take pride in compliance and are motivated which obviously needs to percolate right from the top in an organization.

Feedback needs to be evaluated and ploughed back into procedures, and non-compliance of a procedure or a task needs to be investigated to ascertain whether it is adequate, clear and concise.

Motivating crew and inculcating the discipline to follow laid down procedures when not being watched over, goes a long way in enhancing safety of the operation. After all, the crew should find the procedures relevant and believe that its important for safe operation of aircraft.

Effective implementation of “just culture” in reporting will facilitate increased voluntary procedural deviation reporting, which in turn will lead to specific procedures that are not working well to be amended and make it relevant to crew and the operation as a whole.

Finally, a pat on the back to all who are complying with the procedures, will go a long way in ensuring more joining the tribe leading to increased compliance.


Do you have any strategy in mind that you thing will help increase SOP compliance??? Drop in a line and share the same.

1 comment:

  1. This takes me back to KLM- Royal Dutch Airlines , training college days. Invested good many months in Amsterdam learning skills on flight operations, flight planning , flight plans, meteo, notams, weight and balance et al.

    An important focus was paid by the instructors , in not only asking for correct answers , but seeking inputs to the questions answer by asking the referral "Page & sub sections" .

    SOP manuals thus became not only a Bible of aviation's systems & procedures , but keeping updates recurrent by quoting " Page" became a method of updated knowledge.

    All crew briefing matters, subjects , policies were substantiated by referring to the current " Page" thus a sub-section of practice in use.

    The scientific way of updating the SOP manuals and every users acknowledgment ensuring updates in knowledge and being read thus became a habit for all operational personals in KLM.

    SOP-s are heart and soul of any operational process, more so with Aviation , were the objective first is " safety first " . Practicing SOP's thus is religion & culture of Aviation personal.

    With IT interfaces , laptops, palm-tops and i-pads. Sharing and handling of SOP manuals & practices have become more user friendly. i sincerely hope , we continue to maintain the importance to his subject as highlighted by Capt Srinivas Rao in his blog today.

    I thank my previous employers for inculcating these habits .

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