Q&A: Solairus's Craig Erickson

Craig Erickson is the safety program manager at Solairus Aviation, a private jet charter and aircraft management company based in Petaluma, California. He assumed the position more than six years ago after his predecessor was promoted to assistant chief pilot (later chief pilot). Erickson studied safety management systems in college and after learning to fly, worked in the air-medical industry in dispatcher roles, eventually joining TriState CareFlight in Utah as dispatch supervisor. After taking on the safety program manager role at Solairus, Erickson stepped up the company’s participation in safety programs and employee participation. He shared his experiences with BJT.

You're responsible for safety programs for the whole operation?

That incorporates our entire safety management system [SMS], which goes through our safety audits, safety risk management through our reporting systems, and our safety policies.

SMS is foundational to everything else, right? But the Federal Aviation Administration still doesn’t require SMS for Part 135 or Part 91 operators.

Solaris has had a safety management system since basically day one. It definitely has taken some time to further develop it and enhance it and make it more usable.

Every person who comes to Solairus, it doesn't matter your position, you're going to receive SMS training and also emergency response training. It's one of those core foundational pillars of our organization that continues to develop. If we ever just think that we have arrived, that we are safe, we're fooling ourselves. There should never be a time to say, "OK, we've made it. We are completely done with safety, we’ve achieved the highest." That's never gonna happen. There's always something we can do to continually improve the safety of our operation.

Was the SMS developed in-house or did you work with an outside vendor?

We go through external audits and we take those best practices that are continually evolving and incorporate that into our organization. By having those audits and evaluations, it helps us to say, "Maybe we're missing something, or we're deficient here, or we need to explore something to help us make sure that we are always looking for [improvement]."

You don't mind having multiple audits from different organizations?

We want people to find things. We can't fix things if we don't know about any deficiencies we have. Audits are tough and designed to be stressful and push you through the wringer. But I expect that, and if it was easy, then that's a problem. I want these to expose whatever weakness we have so we can strengthen that.

The SMS is an active hands-on program. It's not a book that sits on a shelf and never gets looked at.

That's exactly right. It is a living, breathing thing in our organization. It doesn't matter if it's one of our frontline pilots, a maintenance supervisor, even our office staff or charter sales folks, or accounting. Everybody is involved with our safety management system. Everybody receives recurrent SMS training, of course on different levels according to their specific job function. But it's a great opportunity to let people know we are actively trying to make things better for them in their workplace and the job that they're doing.

Can you give an example of how the SMS enhances safety and how Solairus has used it to mitigate the risk of a particular hazard?

Every flight goes through a flight release process. During that process, we look at a lot of factors. Are the pilots qualified to go? Is the airplane legal? Are there operational concerns? And we find these things through our flight risk assessment tool [FRAT] for every single leg. Through that, we can identify a records problem, maybe a medical that's expired, or a maintenance limitation. That’s a great opportunity for us to look at that. And then what other risks are they going to encounter during that flight?

The flight crew has that discussion as part of their pre-flight briefing to say, "We are legal. We've identified the risks through our FRAT, and we are good to go. We think we've mitigated those." We have our fatigue-management system that's baked into our processes, where if there's a fatiguing situation, we'll hit that before the trip and put in mitigating factors. That's been a game-changing element for us.

A mitigating factor might be getting a fresher pilot to take over or shortening the trip?

Something like that. With our fatigue management system, we have an analysis that we can do to adjust the trip, [such as adjusting to] the circadian rhythm that is more amenable to that pilot's schedule. We can suggest that or we can augment the trip or have a third crew member that will switch out on the flight. We found that not only do our flight crews like that, but the folks that own the aircraft also like that added sense of security.

Does having a robust safety program help with selling the product to potential owners?

I don't deal with dollars and cents. I'm glad that I don’t. I don't have to worry, "is this a cost?" because safety is the most important value that we have at Solairus. I just communicate that to the executive that's with that aircraft and say, "We have a concern here," and let them have that discussion. Very rarely do we have any pushback. Recently we had to adjust a trip and put limitations on one of our helicopters because we identified that there were some risks with turbulence and other IFR problems where they were flying. I just talked to the crew. They were saying how the owner is grateful that we put those in and are looking out for their overall safety.

Obviously, we know of accidents where the owners have tried to influence the flight crew, but it sounds like the Solairus owners appreciate knowing that you're looking after them.

Exactly. Those conversations happen well before they are signed on with us.

When you onboard new owners, how do they learn about this whole safety philosophy?

It's one of the topics of concern that our executive team brings up. They let the owners know they are going to be watched over just like it's one of our own family members that's going to be on that aircraft. You can expect that we will do everything in your best interest to get you to your destination safely. It's that oversight that helps them feel assured that they’ve signed on with an organization that values that as a core belief.

How would an SMS at Solaris work, looking at that recent accident in San Diego, where the pilots are repositioning after an aeromedical flight, a short distance and relatively familiar airport? They decided to do a nonstandard maneuver that got them into trouble.

That goes back to our flight-risk assessment that we're doing before each trip. It’s not something that's treated casually. It's a serious step; it’s very intentional. We want to make sure everybody in the organization is doing intentional actions, everything from pre-flight planning to the walkaround of their aircraft, to setting up the FMS prior to the trip, to every single thing that's gonna happen with that trip. They have intentional actions of what they're doing so that complacency doesn't creep in, or just out of habit. 

So, how do you, as the leader of the safety program, monitor everyone's compliance and participation and make sure that you're communicating this philosophy to everybody at the same time?

Number one, our safety reporting system is a non-punitive reporting system. If people have made a mistake, or lapse, or have had a problem, they're not going to get blasted by that. We're going to have a conversation to help understand and do a root-cause analysis of what led to that decision or that event. And based on those, we'll take corrective actions. Was there a procedural problem? A training issue? A behavioral problem? What can we do as an organization to provide resources to our folks, so that doesn't happen again? Then communicating that back to the rest of our company.

We have what's called a client aviation manager call where we invite all the CAMs [client aviation managers] to join online. We have a series of discussions, whether it's a leadership module or maybe a maintenance module. I always have a safety presentation where I can tell people about the risks that we've identified, and here's what we're doing to mitigate those risks. Just to make it more aware. Awareness is probably the number-one way we can help curb any kind of problems that we're seeing. Awareness of the issue and how to mitigate those.

There’s a school of thought that instead of firing someone for making a mistake, we should view it as an opportunity to teach and that afterward, that person will never again make that mistake.

We've seen a similar thing. That approach creates ownership. It creates buy-in and a true shared sense of responsibility for that airplane. They don't treat it like just another job. When I was going to college, I was working at Delta Air Lines on the ramp, and I was pushing out L-1011s with 300-plus people on board. I had no idea of the risk that I was undertaking, no idea whatsoever, and nobody ever explained it to me. I look at that now and holy cow, what was I thinking? But if we can help people understand the true risk that they're undertaking by moving these aircraft, by being part of the system, then hopefully it will help to curb some of those unfavorable events that we’ve seen.

How do you actively work with nearly 300 aircraft and hundreds of outlying operations?

We have an all-crew call where everybody gets online a couple of times a year. And we have our base audit program. We visit folks. I'm constantly in communication through email and phone calls, at all hours of the day and night. Our safety committee meets regularly. We’ve been trying to make sure people don't feel like they're on an island out there all by themselves, and having that constant communication. The CAMs are doing a good job of portraying the information that needs to seep down into the ranks. Then if I need to get involved—say, in a specific group like all the Challenger 604 crew or all the pilots flying G650s, I can send information to them.

There are many new entrants to business aviation. Do you think they understand the safety needs of this industry?

We need to make sure that the people that we're flying understand that we're going to try to get them to their destination but if there is any kind of safety element or problem, we're going to deal with it. If we have to divert to another airport because we can't get in because of the weather, we're not going to push it. We're going to explain to them, we can't do this, but here are the other options. You always try to look for solutions instead of just saying, "No, we can’t." Because oftentimes there are other safer solutions that will work with what that person is expecting to happen.

---

This interview has been edited and condensed.