Aviation management of change that finds what a change touches on day one and gets every hazard owned and dated before go-live
Every change assessed before go-live, with every hazard owned and dated.
See one case, screen by screen ↓Aviation management of change is the safety risk management an airline runs before a significant change goes live — a new aircraft type, route, vendor, organization or merger — as 14 CFR 5.51 requires. Aviation Management of Change puts seven agents on that work: they find everything the change touches, compare the manuals, draft a cited safety risk assessment and get every hazard an owner and a date, while people decide, sign and accept the residual risk.
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Aviation management of change starts with 14 CFR 5.51, which requires safety risk management for every new system, revised system and new operational procedure, so an airline that adds an aircraft type, opens a route, swaps a vendor or merges two certificates has to assess the change before it goes live. Today the safety risk manager starts from a blank form, lists the affected departments from memory, books a workshop with each one and copies hazards out of old spreadsheets.
What gets missed is the procedure nobody remembered. In a merger two airlines' manuals differ clause by clause, and nobody reads both in full. The common audit findings follow: mitigations without an owner or a date, controls that finish after go-live, and post-change reviews that never happen because everyone assumes the controls work.
Estimated split for one significant change at a large carrier, by hand and with the solution. 4–6 weeks = 7 departments × 2 review rounds × about 1 week of scheduling each; 1 day is the target in the live solution.
Seven agents find everything a change touches, compare the manuals, draft and re-rate the risk assessment and chase every owner; people decide and sign.
Corvane Airways is moving the acquired Halvard Air's dispatch into its own operations control: 46 dispatchers, 38 routes, 212 daily flights and 54 aircraft, with cutover planned for Mon, Jan 11, 2027. This is MOC-2026-118, screen by screen, in the working solution.
Elena runs 9 open changes; 4 go live in the next 90 days. Her Today screen opens on five things that need her, riskiest first: fuel policy on the dispatch merger is rated 4C High, the check agent disagrees on desk load, and Load Planning and Emergency Response missed their ring confirmation. She can answer any line by asking the agents in plain words.
Change agent: “Overnight the agents read 9 documents, 1,186 pages for the Halvard dispatch merger and drew 36 things it touches.”
The change sits at the center with three rings around it: 7 departments, 19 hazards and procedures, and 10 manuals and training programs. A filled dot shows its risk; a hollow dot is unowned. Clicking Fuel policy opens why it is there: Corvane's DPM 7.3.2 and Halvard's HDM 6.4.1, side by side with the passages highlighted, the draft hazard H-01 and the four manuals and courses it touches.
The impact agent never adds a point to the rings without a cited source.
To finish the system description 14 CFR 5.53(b) asks for, the change agent asks only what it could not find. “Where will the 46 Halvard dispatchers sit after cutover?” — the plan names the DEN center but also keeps the PDX lease until June 2027. Elena picks DEN; the agent fills Facilities in section 1 and moves on to whether OpSpec B343 carries over to the single certificate.
“Noted: all 46 move to DEN. Facilities in section 1 is filled; no remote-desk hazard is needed.”
The agent matched Corvane's Dispatch Procedures Manual rev 31 (612 clauses) with Halvard's Dispatch Manual rev 18 (548 clauses): 486 the same in substance, 61 Halvard-only and retired at cutover, and 14 differences that change what a person does. D-01 is High: Halvard plans contingency fuel as the 95th percentile of 180 days' burn per city pair under OpSpec B343; Corvane carries 10% of trip time.
The agent reports differences; it never decides which airline's procedure is right.
Section 1 is the system description, section 2 the hazards: 14 of them, 1 High, 6 Medium, 7 Low, each with its owner, initial rating and residual target, and every value cited. The check agent rated every hazard without seeing the first rating and agrees on 13 of 14. Four things stand between the draft and sign-off.
The risk agent drafted four controls for H-01 and tested them against the classroom calendar. Classroom DEN-T4 takes 16 dispatchers a week and is booked Dec 21 – Jan 15 for the A350-1000 course, so on Jan 11, 14 of 46 dispatchers would be untrained. It drafted three options: keep Jan 11 with desk load above the 22-flight limit, move cutover to Feb 8, or phase the cutover — island routes on Feb 8, the rest on Jan 11 — with two flight planning systems running in parallel for 4 weeks.
Option B: all 46 trained by Jan 29, then 10 days of shadow dispatch; residual 4E Low; $38,400 to extend Halvard's flight planning license 4 weeks.
Grant owns H-01. He reads the agents' work, sees the check agent recomputed option B blind and agrees at 0.91, and accepts it with reason code M2 — “Date moved so the control is in place before go-live” — and his e-signature. Go-live moves to Mon, Feb 8, 2027 on every screen.
“I accept option B as Grant Holloway, Director of Dispatch — e-signature, Fri, Oct 16, 2026 07:45”
On H-06, flights per dispatch desk, the risk agent rates 3C Medium and the check agent, rating blind, 3B High: the same people learn a new system and new procedures while their load rises 57%, and dispatcher fatigue already has 9 reports this year. The screen shows what each choice means. Elena keeps 3C Medium, and her reason goes on record.
A disagreement between the agents blocks sign-off until a person decides.
Load Planning and Emergency Response missed the 5-business-day ring confirmation, leaving H-10 and H-13 unowned. The coordination agent drafted one message to Isabel Duarte and one to Ray Castillo, each naming the items and asking for a confirmation by Tue, Oct 20. Elena reads them and sends both.
“The coordination agent drafted the messages. Edit, then send. Nothing goes until you send it.”
All five checks pass: the system description complete, 14 of 14 hazards owned, the check agent agrees with every rating, no High left after the controls, and every mitigation done at least 7 days before go-live. Elena approves the assessment; Colin Avery, VP Corporate Safety, accepts the one residual Medium, H-07. Post-change reviews are set for Mar 10 and May 10, 2027.
“Every risk owned, dated and agreed; the assessment is signed and in the audit trail.”
The same dispatch merger, seen by four of the people who carry it — what a change assessment looked like, and what it looks like now.
Seven agents find everything a change touches, compare the manuals, draft and re-rate the risk assessment and chase every owner; people decide and sign.
Reads the change plan and interviews the change owner one question at a time in plain words, then writes the system description 14 CFR 5.53(b) asks for. It also writes the morning briefing.
Finds every department, existing hazard, procedure, manual and training program a change touches, from the document library, hazard register, training catalog and org directory, and draws them as rings.
Compares two airlines' manuals clause by clause for a merger or transition, and returns each difference side by side with both passages cited and a draft hazard.
Drafts hazards, ratings on the carrier's risk matrix, controls and residual risk, then tests whether each control can be in place before go-live against training calendars, capacity and quotes.
Re-rates every hazard and re-checks every option blind, with read-only access to every source, and explains its reasons when it disagrees.
Assigns owners from the org directory, tracks ring confirmations and mitigation dates against go-live, drafts reminders and escalates when the SLA passes.
At 30 and 90 days after go-live, reads the safety reports, flight data summaries and indicators the assessment named, and proposes closing the review or reopening a hazard.
Approves every assessment; owners decide, the VP accepts residual risk. The agents propose; a named person decides.
Every screen has the agents beside the work. Ask why, ask what-if, or tell them what to do; answers cite their source, and nothing is approved, sent or signed until a person says so.
Why is fuel policy on the rings?
Halvard plans contingency fuel statistically; Corvane carries 10% of trip time. Halvard's authorization applies to its certificate only, so the method stops at cutover. Rated 4C High.
Why not keep Jan 11?
Option A leaves 32 trained dispatchers for 212 Halvard flights a day: up to 24 flights a desk, above the 22-flight limit. I do not agree with it.
Could more classroom seats save the date?
A second classroom at PDX from Dec 21 would train the last 14 by Jan 8, for about $61,200. It leaves 3 days of margin; I would rate my confidence 0.78, below your 0.80 threshold.
Who could own H-13 if Ray cannot?
In Emergency Response, Wes Kimura is the duty manager who runs the go-team list.
13 screens from the working solution, on its sample data. Pick one to see it large.
The risk matrix, who accepts each level, the agents' thresholds and the clocks are settings the SMS administrator owns; a change needs a second signer and is logged.
| Setting | Default | Choose from |
|---|---|---|
| Risk levels on the matrix | Medium from index 6, High from 12 | Index = severity 1–5 × likelihood A–E; both thresholds editable |
| Low residual risk accepted by | Department director | Department director · VP Corporate Safety |
| Medium residual risk accepted by | VP Corporate Safety | VP Corporate Safety · Accountable Executive |
| Ask a person below confidence | 0.80 | Any value between 0 and 1 |
| The check agent must agree | On — a disagreement blocks sign-off | On · off |
| Mitigations done before go-live | 7 days | 0 to 59 days |
| Owners confirm their ring within | 5 business days | 1 to 29 business days; escalate to the safety lead after the SLA |
| Reminders | 3 and 1 business days before | 3 and 1 business days before · Every business day · Only at the due date |
Every figure is labelled: a target the solution is built to, an estimate, a typical published result, or a proven one.
“demo” = seen in the working solution, on its sample data · “target” = the design goal, measured in the live solution · “estimated” = our estimate (4–6 weeks = 7 departments × 2 review rounds × about 1 week of scheduling) · “typical” = published figures (published accounts of a US network airline merger's single operating certificate — more than 700 employees aligning manuals and procedures over more than 18 months). Regulations named: 14 CFR 5.51, 5.53 and 5.55; FAA SMS final rule, 89 FR 33068 (Apr 26, 2024). People, Corvane Airways, Halvard Air and every document, flight and aircraft named on this page are fictional — characters and sample data in the working solution.
Aviation management of change is the safety risk management an airline runs before a significant change goes live — a new aircraft type, route, vendor, organization or merger — as 14 CFR 5.51 requires. Aviation Management of Change puts seven agents on that work: they find everything the change touches, compare the manuals, draft a cited safety risk assessment and get every hazard an owner and a date, while people decide, sign and accept the residual risk.
14 CFR 5.51 applies safety risk management to the implementation of new systems, the revision of existing systems and the development of operational procedures. In the solution, the triggers are settings: a new aircraft type or variant, a new route or station, a new vendor in a safety-critical service, a merger or integration, an organization change, and new equipment or software — each with its own question set.
The procedure compare agent reads both airlines' manuals clause by clause and returns each difference side by side with both passages cited and a draft hazard. In the demo it matched a 612-clause and a 548-clause dispatch manual and found 14 differences that change what a dispatcher does, one of them High.
By our estimate, a significant change takes 4–6 weeks of calendar time by hand: about 7 departments, two review rounds and a week of scheduling each. The target is a drafted, cited assessment in one day; department leads then confirm their rings within the 5-business-day SLA you set.
No agent accepts a risk, closes a review or sends a message. Residual risk is accepted at the level your risk matrix sets — in the demo, Low by the department director, Medium by the VP Corporate Safety and High by the Accountable Executive — each with a reason code and an e-signature.
The check agent re-rates every hazard without seeing the first rating. When it disagrees, both ratings and their reasons are shown side by side and sign-off stays blocked until the safety lead decides; the decision and its reason go on the audit trail.
Yes. At 30 and 90 days the post-change review agent reads the safety reports, flight data summaries and indicators the assessment named and proposes closing the review or reopening a hazard. Quality assurance signs the review.
The Agentic Solution Engine builds and deploys it from your requirements and documents — your SMS manual, risk matrix, a sample of past change assessments and the manuals they touched — and it goes live once every quality gate has passed. We will walk you through it on one of your own changes first.
Every report routed the same day, every repeat linked before it is scored.
1-min demoAviation Safety Action Program (ASAP)Every ASAP report ready before the ERC meets, every action tracked to closure.
1-min demoSafety Investigation ManagementReports drafted in days, not weeks, with every finding tied to its evidence.
1-min demoWe'll run Aviation Management of Change on one of your own change plans and the manuals it touches.