Personal SMS
A practical Safety Management System built for pilots who operate their own helicopters.
Open Personal SMS → Explore More Pilot ResourcesSafety management isn’t only for large flight departments.
Helicopter owner-pilots routinely make decisions involving weather, proficiency, aircraft condition, mission pressure, passengers, terrain, and personal limitations. Personal SMS provides a simple framework for recognizing those risks, thinking through them deliberately, and learning from your own flying.
A practical system for the way owner-pilots actually fly
Personal SMS is intended to bring useful safety-management principles into a format that makes sense for a single pilot or aircraft owner.
Identify Your Risks
Think deliberately about the hazards that are actually present in your aircraft, missions, environment, and flying habits.
Manage Them Proactively
Document mitigations and actions before a recurring hazard becomes an accident or incident.
Learn From Your Flying
Capture lessons, concerns, and recurring themes so experience becomes something you can deliberately build upon.
Why I Built Personal SMS
I originally built Personal SMS for my own operation.
After leaving a company where I had helped develop and used a formal Safety Management System, I began flying independently for clients around the country. I no longer had the infrastructure of a larger flight department behind me, but I still wanted an organized way to identify hazards, track recurring concerns, document mitigations, and learn from my own operation.
I didn’t need a complicated corporate SMS. I needed something simple enough to actually use, but structured enough to maintain good habits and identify trends over time.
The Personal SMS App grew out of that need.
It is designed for independent pilots and owner-operators who want the benefits of professional safety management in a simple, practical format.
A Full SMS — Scaled for One Pilot
A fully developed Safety Management System has four key components. Personal SMS applies those same principles at a practical scale for an individual pilot or owner-operator.
| SMS Component | Personal SMS Application |
|---|---|
| 1. Safety Policy | Personal Minimums — Establish and commit to the standards and boundaries you intend to operate within before you’re faced with the decision while feeling pressures or under-resourced. |
| 2. Safety Risk Management | FRAT + Risk Assessment — Identify hazards, assess risk, and establish mitigations before and during your operations. |
| 3. Safety Assurance | Review & Trends — Review past hazards, mitigations, Personal Minimums, and FRATs to identify trends and determine whether your risk controls are actually working. |
| 4. Safety Promotion | Habits & Continuous Improvement — Regular use reinforces a personal culture of safety, while training and proficiency-related Personal Minimums create deliberate goals for continued development as a pilot. |
Built from operational experience
Personal SMS was developed by SafeRotors founder Dave Dziura, an FAA Designated Pilot Examiner, helicopter instructor, and IS-BAO aviation safety auditor. His work includes pilot training and evaluation, operational safety auditing and consultation, accident-data analysis, and working directly with helicopter owner-pilots.
SafeRotors develops practical tools and resources intended to help pilots make better-informed decisions and reduce preventable risk.
Personal SMS is currently in beta.
I’m actively using and refining the app, and all feedback is appreciated. If you find something confusing, have an idea for improvement, or see a feature that would make it more useful, please let me know.
Build a safety system around your flying.
Personal SMS is designed to be useful immediately. Start with one hazard, one concern, or one lesson you’ve already encountered and build from there.
Open Personal SMS →