Essentially, the intent of a safety management system is to ensure that the carriers that are operating in our civil aviation environment have a system in place to regularly assess that they are following the required regulations we have in the civil aviation regime. Many people incorrectly try to say that this is self-regulation. It is anything but. Safety management systems are another layer on top of the regulatory regime to ensure that companies pay attention to safety on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to trying to pass inspections once a year when we come in and look at how their operations work.
On November 29th, 2012. See this statement in context.