Financial Challenges with Global Aerospace SMS
As stated, PIAC management was scrambling to improve their image from the June 2020 fatal crash. From our perspective, PIAC was trying to use SMS Pro as a positive message to the world's civil aviation regulatory agencies. Naturally, PIAC wanted to express that they were ready to embrace change and fix their systemic, cultural issues that blatantly ignored safety at the expense of unwary passengers.
I was not convinced. My message to PIAC in July 2020 relayed my sentiments:
"For the past dozen years, SMS Pro has been a market leader in aviation SMS software. Our success allows us to carefully select our clients. In short, we don't need PIAC's business as we have plenty of capital. Doing business with PIAC fails to excite me.
Over the past ten years, PIAC's safety and quality employees have repeatedly approached us to acquire the system. They educated us how things really work at PIAC when auditors are not around and that your safety culture lacks top management support and adequate budget.
Since PIAC's safety culture has so many problems, I prefer that you choose one of the cheaper, less sophisticated systems you already identified, i.e., IMX, Q5 and Curoson (from Ideagen).
SMS Pro is not for every company, especially companies like yours with substandard safety cultures that don't have top management support."
While the message to PIAC was clear, our short-sighted, blunt approach did not address the global aerospace safety challenge.
In so many cases, safety is about the money. For passengers who have no control over "renegade management teams," this injustice screams loudly. Passengers expect safe operations, especially if the operator is an IATA certified carrier.
The above, real-life scenario remains a primary factor in our subsidized pricing model.