✈️ When Commercial KPIs Reach the Flight Deck
Airlines run two scorecards. One is commercial. The other is operational safety. Trouble starts when Board, leadership, HR, Marketing and Commercial promises are transferred to Operations, and treated as the real rulebook.
The Board wants growth & reputation. Leadership turns that into OTP, utilisation & cost. HR measures throughput. Commercial sells punctuality & “we don’t cancel.” Those KPIs are legitimate. The failure is the silent transfer: Dispatch protects the bank, turnarounds shrink, training is compressed, & crews hear that a go-around (G/A) is a delay & a stabilised approach is optional if the slot is at risk.
That is production pressure, not performance management.
KPI is not SPI. A promise is not an SPT.
Commercial KPIs measure what the market bought: OTP, load factor, yield, utilisation. Safety Performance Indicators & Targets measure what SMS must protect: unstable approaches, go-around compliance, long/fast landings, FDM SOP deviations, runway-condition decisions.
When crews are ranked on commercial KPIs, they learn to fly the dashboard that pays, not the FCOM/SOPs. Work-as-imagined stays in the manual. Work-as-done follows the bonus. That gap is where runway excursion (RE) risk is born.
The Accountable Manager is not a ceremonial signature
The AM’s name is on the certificate, promised to implement & maintain a management system to ensure compliance with the essential requirements set out in the Rules, manage safety risks & aim for continuous improvement of that system. That role exists so commercial promises do not burden training, or the implementation of FCOM/SOPs on 100% of flights. If commercial KPIs outrank SPI/SPT in daily decisions, the airline has two systems: a documented SMS & an informal one. The informal one flies the aircraft.
A RE is rarely “the pilot made a mistake.” It is usually the last link: a commercial promise accepted at the top, transferred as constraint, training still teaching the SOP while the line rewards the schedule, then an unstable approach continued because a G/A “looks bad.” The pilot was aligned with the organisation’s real priorities.
Protect the line
Keep commercial dashboards separate from SMS dashboards. Put SPI/SPT on the Board agenda. Bind incentives to safety performance, not only punctuality. Resource training so FCOM/SOP is practised as it must be flown. Give crews a lived no-fault go-around policy Commercial cannot override. If a promise cannot be kept without degrading SOP discipline, change the promise, not the procedure.
The certificate is signed for every sector, not only those that fit the marketing slide. If commercial teams can name their KPIs in one page, the Accountable Manager must name the SPI/SPT those KPIs are not allowed to distort. That is how you keep a RE from becoming the first time the transfer of promises is noticed.
21/09/26 at 18:00, 30 min. online, get your seat : sms@mycs.swiss or +41 79 287 80 99
