mercurydancer;
Whilst air travel is not essential it is largely an inescapable part of modern life. SLF invest money and their lives in air transport. I imagine that I am not alone in thinking that I would want to pay my fares to a company with both reliable aircraft and ground staff, (which as it is regulated is demonstrable to passengers) but also to a company who invest in the aircrew. A measured career pathway where the FD crew are taught appropriately, and gather substantial experience is not a privelege of select airlines but should be essential. Ive posted before about the trust that UK people had in BA and not without reason. To provide a long-term structure to air crew development is not optional it is essential and if MBA man thinks that it is not essential then he (or she) will see the company go the way of all things.
I concur wholeheartedly with all you say regarding what is essential and not merely a privilege and I suspect even airline managers would agree with this notion and so too, I expect, would the regulator.
However, in your post you are talking about "should". The reality is substantially different and I see no dynamics (short of the kind of event which occurred in Canada and created the Moshansky Inquiry), that the industry in North America anyway, is about to change.
With profit margins as thin as ever, a recession on in most western countries except Canada and Australia and fuel prices at US$75/barrel and climbing, and unrealistic investor time frames and expectations keeping down share prices, the freedom to long-term plan, or provide "
career development strategies" for pilots simply does not exist and, given industrial matters alone, would be next to impossible to establish.
I hope I understand what you mean here and please help me if I have misperceived. If I have understood your notion, I have to state that there is no such thing as a "
measured career pathway" in this industry today or even when I was flying. There is no long-term structure for air crew development, and what's more, no manager is ever going to even broach the notion because it will go nowhere in today's operational environment.
While training, standards and checking, pay and benefits are, to varying degrees of robustness and success, all part of the mix in this industry as it has unfolded over the last thirty years, airlines today want "98.6" in the cockpit seats; only then do they deal with these other issues. The Colgan accident at Buffalo and the Comair accident at Lexington for two examples, highlighted what I and many in the industry have known and have been writing about for years - that the industry is just getting by in these initiatives and responsibilities. With an increasingly absent regulator which has, via "SMS" (Safety Management Systems) downloaded flight safety responsibilities in terms of self-regulation and self-auditing onto the airlines, the opportunity to do even less has opened up. Airlines are always searching for ways to reduce costs - a legitimate business strategy, providing there are both programs and metrics in place to advise when management has cut too close to the bone. Such programs are generally unpopular with cash-strapped managements however, and, with an absentee regulator, can "safely" be ignored until/unless something serious happens, (in which case we are back to kicking tin).
Please know that I fully understand that these notions and this writing are very black-and-white, polarizing ideas rather than teasing out the subtleties and exceptions, the vast number of unsung successes and making clear that the industry is still extremely safe in comparison with other modes of transportation. Highlighting weaknesses in a high-risk system is what safety people do all the time. My views, while perhaps to some seem like bleeding on and on here and in other threads as to signals and causes, are by no means alone. These are long-term trends that are unfolding, that will end in an increasing accident rate within our industry unless measures are taken to address the issues being raised. The FAA has actually responded in the US and for very good reason as illustrated in the serious maintenance violations discovered at Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and others.
I think it is naive to expect or believe that airlines would develop pilots at a "measured pace" and that career advancement is something that airlines actually care about. They don't - not one bit. If they could get an autoflight system that got rid of one of the two expensive resources in the cockpit, they would buy it in a heartbeat. Beyond a reluctant acknowledgement in cases where push comes to shove such as long-haul crew augmentation, they don't even care how fatigued their pilots are, a fact demonstrated by airlines' refusal to involve themselves more than they must to keep peace, in formal discussions on fatigue risk management approaches for domestic and overseas long-haul pilots alike.
The industry is at a turning point in its safety record. For various reasons expressed here and in other threads, (the constancy and lengths of posts for which I apologize), those who are coming into and managing this industry and who are far away from the coal-face, have little to no idea of how it got so safe and are taking for granted its spectacular safety record and the processes which brought about that record including a strong willingness to take a very close look at its ugly parts.
The dynamics of airline traffic growth in an increasingly de-regulated environment where regulatory oversight is concerned, versus the availability of experienced, "case-hardened" pilots who actually still want to work in this industry, have placed these two phenomena on a collision course and we are already seeing early results. That is the only point being made in all these words.
I know only too keenly that this isn't pleasant stuff for most to read. But it is the kind of stuff that made this industry as safe as it is. If, as
lomapaseo expresses, others read these discussions and take away some doubts as to their own operation and find "new eyes" with which to view their operation's approach to safety, then this will have been worth the effort by all. This is anything but critical of the industry I love. While criticism is traditionally anything but popular and is usually seen as not being a "team player", (big mistake, in my view), to me, strong criticism is the highest form of loyalty. We need more than ever, an inquiry into how this industry is changing.
I've said more than enough. We will see where this goes.