1. US Forest Service Aviation Information Bulletin
No. FSIB January 30, Page 1 of 1
Subject: Aviation Safety Management System Success
Area of Concern: The Agency Aviation System
Distribution: Forest Service Agency-wide
Discussion: The 2017 season may represent the “new normal” for fire operations, but from an aviation standpoint the 2017 season was an aviation safety managing success. Our latest figures indicate that the Interagency aviation community flew a total of 87,143 hours in 2017; the ten year average is 67,562 hours. Every second of every minute of those hours required someone in our system to make a decision, each one of which could have resulted in an error. Yes, errors were made, but the successful management of those errors is where we celebrate a victory!
As the 2018 operational season evolves, focus on mitigating identified hazards, making risk decisions at the appropriate level, and managing threats and errors in real time by exhibiting effective crew resource management (CRM).
Whether your ASMS is company-driven or agency-driven means nothing when we communicate with a common vocabulary, purpose, reliability and trust. The management of safety policy, safety risk, safety assurance and safety promotion cannot take place without a positive culture (the collective personality) and climate (the collective mood) established daily by everyone: contracted partners, maintenance personnel, pilots, ground support ,air tanker base personnel, helitack managers and crew, dispatch personnel, aerial supervisors, first responders and aviation managers.
Each functional area will continue to experience distractions, interruptions and preoccupations (DIP), let each inevitable challenge meet the same system resilience that marked the 2017 operational season.
/s/ Kent Hamilton
Branch Chief, Aviation
Safety Management Systems
USDA Forest Service