How to Deal with Specific Challenges within your Aviation Quality System?

 Sofema Online (SOL) www.sofemaonline.com Considers best-practice behaviours to improve the effectiveness of your Aviation Quality System.

 Introduction: Let’s start by considering the composition of an EASA/GCAA compliant Quality System.

       »  The first comment to make is that there are actually 2 distinct elements as shown below:

           o   Quality Control - In just a few words this measures the organisation's ability to comply with the rules and deliver the production process in an effective way involving process procedures, management, competence, training, and effective culture and behavior.
           o   Quality Assurance - Again, in a nutshell, the QA process is intended to “ensure’ the effectiveness of the QC process by means of independent assessment (means the assessor is not part of the delivery of the product)

Note: We can fall into an organisational “hole” without an effective QA process, even though all looks good there are many latent issues that have not risen for one reason or another to the surface.

       »  We want - rather we need for the Quality Assurance System to identify all exposures.
       »  We should strive to look deeper than the initial “pass-through” so that we can exposure organisational deficiencies before they manifest as a problem and in this way to provide the organisation with a Safety Net.
       » Consider the examples of Value Jet 592 and Alaska 261.

Do we have a shared understanding of (Value Jet 592 and Alaska 261) what happened and why it happened? Exposures and the lessons to be learned (If not check Wikipedia)

 Brief Synopsis:

       »  In the case of Value Jet, it was a contract service provider - Sabre Tech who was found to be negligent. In the case of Alaska, it was internal processes that drove precursors leading up to the event where the aircraft was lost.
       »   A special inspection conducted by the NTSB in April 2000 of Alaska Airlines uncovered widespread significant deficiencies that “the FAA should have uncovered earlier.
       »   The investigation concluded that “FAA surveillance of Alaska Airlines had been deficient for at least several years.
       »  The NTSB noted that in July 2001, an FAA panel determined that Alaska Airlines had corrected the previously identified deficiencies. However several factors led the Board to question “the depth and effectiveness of Alaska Airlines corrective actions” and “the overall adequacy of Alaska Airlines’ maintenance program.

Systematic problems were identified by the investigation in the FAA’s oversight of maintenance programs, including inadequate staffing, its approval process of maintenance interval extensions, and the aircraft certification requirements.

(Please consider where the NTSB is in the “Food Chain”) The role of The organisation is to comply with all requirements in an effective way - Direct responsibility.

 Consider Roles and Responsibilities

The role of QA within any organisation is to independently ensure that the QC element is functioning correctly.
The role of the Regulator is in actual fact oversight and in the case of the European & UAE system – EASA/GCAA the regulator is actually 2 steps removed from the event.
So clear we should see that it is incumbent on the QA department to ensure that we identify all issues in a diplomatic and effective way.

Never forgetting our role is to help, to identify, to enlighten, and never to police.

Sofema Aviation Services offers a range of Quality and Compliance Training courses, both Open and In-Company training.

Next Steps

Sofema Aviation Services (SAS) and Sofema Online (SOL) provide EASA Regulatory Compliant and Vocational training including more than 50 courses specifically related to Quality Assurance and Root Cause Analysis - Delivered as classroom, webinar, and online certificated courses – for details please see the websites or email team@sassofia.com