Perceptions of safety management and safety culture in the aviation industry in New Zealand

This paper uses industry wide survey data to assess employees' perceptions of safety management and safety culture in the aviation industry. Results show that organisations, in ensuring safety, considered employees' safety responsibilities to be more important than implementing effective safety management systems and encouraging positive safety culture. Aircraft maintenance engineers appeared to be committed to standards and operating procedures and effective organisational processes in making the maintenance system work. Interestingly, pilots regarded luck to be a significant contributing factor in safety. Overall, the findings suggest the various sectors of the aviation industry need to do much more to improve the prevailing safety culture. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.