Aviation safety is not the product of chance, nor the mechanical outcome of a regulation followed to the letter. It is the product of a system — living, documented, animated daily by women and men trained to recognise danger before it becomes an accident. That system has a name: Safety Management System, or SMS. For AéroNéo, preparing its installation on the Tiaret aeronautical base, SMS is not just another document to draft for the audit: it is the cultural backbone of a credible MRO shop, capable of honouring its safety commitments to ANAC, to operators and to its own technicians.
1. SMS: a systemic approach to aviation safety
For decades, aviation safety was built reactively: an accident, an investigation, a recommendation, a new regulation. That loop, long effective, reached its limits when global statistics stopped improving at the same pace as traffic growth. The industry had to move from a reactive logic to a proactive and predictive one, capable of anticipating danger before it produces an event.
SMS is that answer. Rather than treating each incident individually, it considers the organisation as a system made of processes, human interfaces, procedures, equipment and a culture. Every possible failure is tracked not after the fact but through systematic identification of latent hazards, risk evaluation, mitigation measures and ongoing verification of their effectiveness.
SMS does not replace classical technical requirements (PART-145, PART-M, PART-66, etc.). It grafts onto them as a cross-cutting layer that constantly asks: is what we do safe, and will it still be safe tomorrow under different conditions? That permanent questioning is the true signature of a mature aviation organisation.
2. ANAC Algeria first, then ICAO Annex 19
In Algeria, the SMS framework is carried by the ANAC (National Civil Aviation Authority). It transposes international requirements into national law and audits their implementation in air transport, maintenance, training and aerodrome management organisations. Any entity operating on Algerian soil and wishing to operate or maintain 7T- registered aircraft must, first and foremost, comply with the SMS framework published and overseen by ANAC, in line with Law 98-06 on civil aviation and its implementing texts.
ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), through its Annex 19 to the Chicago Convention, provides the international reference to which national authorities align. Annex 19, in force since 2013 and revised since, consolidates in a single text the requirements previously scattered across several annexes (1, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14). It mandates that contracting States implement a State Safety Programme (SSP) and that the organisations under their oversight implement an SMS.
ANAC capitalises on that double movement: building a national Algerian framework aligned with ICAO standards while retaining full sovereignty of oversight. European references (EASA Part-145, Part-CAMO, Part-ORO) and American ones (FAA 14 CFR) embed the same principles; they remain secondary references, called upon mainly for extensions of approval intended to serve foreign-registered aircraft.
3. The four pillars of SMS
The architecture of SMS, as defined by ANAC in line with ICAO, rests on four inseparable pillars. None can be neglected without compromising the whole.
3.1 Safety Policy and Objectives
The first pillar formalises management commitment. A safety policy signed by the Accountable Manager describes the organisation’s vision, resource allocation, safety responsibilities of each role, communication requirements and the place of the Safety Manager. Without that written, signed, displayed and regularly reaffirmed commitment, the SMS is a dead document.
3.2 Safety Risk Management
The second pillar organises hazard identification and risk assessment. Every hazard — from operational feedback, audits, voluntary reports or procedural analysis — is logged, evaluated through a probability × severity matrix, and treated with mitigation measures until residual risk is acceptable. This pillar is the operational engine of the SMS.
3.3 Safety Assurance
The third pillar ensures the system actually works. It relies on internal audits, inspections, safety performance indicators (SPI), safety performance targets (SPT) and management reviews. If a mitigation proves ineffective, Safety Assurance detects it and feeds it back to Risk Management for treatment.
3.4 Safety Promotion
The fourth pillar carries the safety culture. Initial and recurrent training, briefings, shared lessons learned, internal bulletins, celebration of useful reports: safety promotion keeps the SMS alive beyond paper. Without that constant pedagogical work, the best procedures wither against daily routine.
4. Just Culture: honest error or wilful negligence
No SMS can function if technicians fear punishment for reporting an event. That is the meaning of Just Culture, which clearly distinguishes four types of behaviour and their appropriate consequences.
- Honest error: unintentional act or omission by a trained operator acting in good faith. The organisational response is procedural, training or ergonomic improvement — never sanction.
- At-risk behaviour: shortcut, normalised drift, non-malicious bypass of a procedure perceived as inadequate. The response is coaching, reminder of rules and revision of the procedure when ill-calibrated.
- Wilful negligence: conscious violation, deliberate choice to ignore a rule whose importance was known. The response is disciplinary.
- Intentional act: sabotage, malice, deliberate falsification. Disciplinary and, where relevant, criminal response.
Just Culture is neither naïve (“never sanction”) nor punitive (“find the culprit”). It protects those who report and sanctions those who knowingly choose to put others at risk. That ridge line is what makes possible the steady flow of reports without which an SMS dries up within months.
“Safety begins the day a technician dares to say what they saw, without fear of being singled out.”
5. Hazard Identification: SDR, MOR, internal reports
Identifying hazards is the first operational act of SMS. That identification relies on multiple channels, some voluntary, others mandatory.
- Mandatory Occurrence Reporting (MOR): mandatory reporting to the authority of any event listed by regulation (in-flight engine failure, loss of control, serious incident, structural failure, etc.). MORs feed the national ANAC database and, by aggregation, international databases.
- Service Difficulty Report (SDR): reporting of in-service technical difficulties, not necessarily reaching the MOR threshold. SDRs enrich shared knowledge of recurring failures.
- Voluntary Reporting: voluntary and confidential reporting by a technician, protected by Just Culture. This channel captures the weak signals that mandatory channels let pass.
- Audits, inspections, lessons learned: structured, planned internal sources whose findings also feed the hazard register.
Each report is logged in a single register, the hazard log, which becomes the safety logbook of the organisation. An SMS that does not keep an up-to-date hazard log is not an SMS.
6. Safety Risk Assessment: probability × severity matrix
Once a hazard is identified, the risk it represents must be estimated. The universally recognised tool is the probability × severity matrix, or 5×5 matrix, crossing two scales to produce an overall risk level.
| Severity \ Probability | Extremely rare | Rare | Occasional | Frequent | Very frequent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catastrophic | Moderate | High | High | Unacceptable | Unacceptable |
| Hazardous | Moderate | Moderate | High | High | Unacceptable |
| Major | Low | Moderate | Moderate | High | High |
| Minor | Low | Low | Moderate | Moderate | High |
| Negligible | Acceptable | Low | Low | Moderate | Moderate |
Each cell dictates the course of action. Acceptable and low zones allow operations to continue under simple monitoring. The moderate zone requires mitigation and regular review. The high zone calls for immediate mitigation and close follow-up. The unacceptable zone requires the relevant operations to be suspended until mitigations bring risk to a tolerable level.
Assessment is never purely statistical. It combines historical data, expert judgement, operational feedback and detailed knowledge of local conditions. For a shop installed in Algeria, factoring in the Saharan context, intense sunlight, summer heat or sand exposure is an assessment requirement that international databases simply do not capture.
7. Mitigation: bringing risk to an acceptable residual level
Mitigation is the set of actions that reduce risk to an acceptable residual level. SMS ranks these actions in a well-established hierarchy, from most to least effective.
- Elimination: remove the hazard entirely. Ideal but rarely available.
- Substitution: replace the hazard with a less dangerous alternative (less toxic chemical, safer tooling).
- Engineering controls: physical barriers, interlocks, automation, guardrails, ventilation.
- Administrative controls: procedures, training, checklists, signage, briefings.
- Personal protective equipment: helmets, gloves, harnesses, ear protection — last line of defence.
A mitigation is never considered effective until it has been verified over time. Safety Assurance then takes the stage: performance indicators, targeted audits, periodic reviews. Residual risk is documented, formally accepted by the Accountable Manager and reassessed on a defined cycle. No residual risk is eternal: it lives, evolves, and must be revisited.
8. SafA and audits: internal, external, authority
An SMS does not just produce plans. It checks that those plans produce the expected effects. That verification operates at several complementary audit levels.
- Internal audits: led by the quality or safety department, independent from production. They cover the whole scope on a multi-year plan, and findings feed Safety Assurance.
- External commissioned audits: supplier audits, customer audits, third-party audits (accredited bodies). The organisation may be audited by airlines wishing to check before handing over an aircraft, or by accredited bodies issuing complementary certifications.
- Authority audits: conducted by ANAC as part of continuous oversight. They verify regulatory compliance, SMS consistency and corrective action effectiveness.
- SafA-type programmes: coordinated ramp inspection programmes that complement documentary audits with unannounced, fact-based checks.
The outcome of an audit is never a mere finding list. It feeds a corrective action plan (CAP), root-cause tracking and, eventually, documentary revision. A finding left untreated within deadlines becomes a hazard in its own right, and enters the hazard log itself.
9. The Safety Manager in a PART-145
In an approved maintenance organisation, the SMS is carried by a nominated Safety Manager, whose function is defined by PART-145 and recognised by the authority. That function is distinct from the Quality Manager, even if both work hand in hand.
The Safety Manager’s remit typically covers:
- Chairing the Safety Review Board and Safety Action Group.
- Maintaining the hazard log and risk register.
- Designing and tracking safety performance indicators (SPI/SPT).
- Coordinating internal investigations after events.
- Steering the safety training plan and promotion campaigns.
- Acting as primary interface with ANAC for MOR reporting.
The Safety Manager is not a production hierarchy role. They have direct access to the Accountable Manager and functional independence allowing unfiltered escalation of sensitive matters. That independence is closely examined during initial audits: a Safety Manager reporting to the production lead would lose their alerting capacity.
10. AéroNéo: an SMS programme from the pre-operational phase
AéroNéo is in pre-launch. The MRO shop on the Tiaret aeronautical base has not yet received its ANAC approval. Yet SMS construction begins today, and that is a deliberate choice. Waiting for production start-up to draft a safety policy means chasing an organisation already in motion — exactly the scenario SMS aims to avoid.
AéroNéo’s SMS programme is structured over three horizons:
- Pre-operational phase: drafting the safety policy, designating the prospective Safety Manager, designing the risk matrix tailored to the Algerian context, identifying structural hazards linked to the location (climate, sand, heat, logistics), initial training of the management nucleus.
- Approval phase: integrating the SMS into the MOE submitted to ANAC, deploying the operational hazard log, first dry-run internal audits, calibrating SPIs, training all technicians on reporting and Just Culture.
- Operational phase: running the Safety Review Board, MOR reporting to ANAC, quarterly management reviews, progressive integration of operational feedback from the first shop floor projects, opening the SMS to additional requirements of possible EASA Part-145 or FAA Part-145 extensions.
The ambition is clear: make SMS not an audit formality but a competitive advantage. A shop whose technicians report without fear, whose risks are mapped and whose mitigation decisions are traced is a shop to which operators confidently entrust their aircraft. Safety is not a cost: it is the very condition of commercial trust.
Summary table: SMS component × tools × owner
| SMS component | Main tools | Primary owner |
|---|---|---|
| Safety Policy | Signed charter, safety org chart, resource allocation | Accountable Manager |
| Hazard Identification | MOR, SDR, voluntary reports, audits, hazard log | Safety Manager |
| Safety Risk Assessment | Probability × severity matrix, expert judgement, operational feedback | Safety Manager + team leaders |
| Mitigation | Hierarchy of controls, corrective action plans, indicator tracking | Maintenance Manager + Safety Manager |
| Safety Assurance | Internal audits, SPI/SPT, management reviews | Quality Manager + Safety Manager |
| Safety Promotion | Initial and recurrent training, briefings, bulletins, REX sharing | Safety Manager + HR |
| Just Culture | Clear disciplinary policy, reporter protection, arbitration | Accountable Manager |
| Authority interface | MOR reporting to ANAC, surveillance audits, CAP follow-up | Safety Manager |
An SMS is not a library of binders. It is a collective discipline expressed every morning in how a team opens a hangar, prepares an intervention, logs an observation and closes a shift. For AéroNéo, the commitment is taken: build that discipline now, under ANAC oversight, leaning on the international standards carried by ICAO. Because in the end, the only metric that truly counts in aviation is that no aircraft released by our hands is ever implicated in a safety event.
