AirRabbit;
An abiding respect and an attending to simple manners in public discussion is fundamental to a collegial dialogue and it certainly is mine in my posts.
In professional discussions there is no percentage in getting personal with an anonymous poster on the basis of a few words. "What, not who" is a priority. I thank you for your response in kind.
Thanks for providing a bit of your background; it helps in interpreting and understanding your views.
But, as a practicing conservative, I strongly believe that governmental regulation should be kept to an absolute minimum – governed by legalities and improprieties. In other words, monopolies shouldn’t be allowed. Mistreatment of employees shouldn’t be allowed. Conscription by employers shouldn’t be allowed. Collusion and “price fixing” shouldn’t be allowed. But there should not be a governmental practice that ensures the success of any specific business. Such a practice merely ensures having policies (heaven forbid, laws) that allow steps to be taken to have the taxpayer or business customers pick up the cost of that specific business being successful when the business owners/managers can’t make of go it on their own. It is particularly reprehensible when such “bailout” measures are taken by the government that generated the reason for the “bailout” necessity in the first place.
If that is what was meant by "de-regulation", then I would be a "practising conservative" as well.
We won't debate last October, Greenspan, Bernanke, Bush, Obama here but I know it would be a lively discussion over a few ales. I'm not exactly sure what "politics" I'm a "practitioner" of except to keep watching and thinking, but to me the hypocrisy which on the one hand boasts an unbridled fundamentalist capitalism and which on the other hand swiftly bails out failures of the richest capitalist organizations because to not do so would cause the collapse of the nation, (so say some), simply brings home what I have observed to be a standing rule in the US, less so in Canada, Australia and Europe, of
the privatization of profit and the socialization of risk and failure. One is a capitalist and actually believes it and lives by those rules or not but placing oneself in a position of bringing down a nation's (and therefore the world's) economy either because the "government made us do it" or by traditional capitalist greed and institutional avarice is the best of both worlds for the bonussed few while the majority of the middle class, (or what is left of the middle class), have watched their wages, benefits including pensions and lifestyles steadily decline. It was the ultimate capitalist Henry Ford who thought employees should make at least enough wages to buy the product they made. Today, the opposite obtains in an economy run off taxpayer largesse in the greatest re-distributionist scheme ever, just to save a few sorry capitalist behinds. Perhaps we are of a common mind on this.
Greed and avarice require some measure of control because it is obvious over the last year certainly, that those who value these characteristics will not control themselves.
Whether further intervention or a true laissez-faire economy where the population is no longer a community and is instead atomized where it is every man for himself, is a decision which the present administration, and practising conservatives and liberals alike, must wrestle.
George Bush squandered the US' position in the world as no other president (inherited huge surplus, left with the largest deficit) and that is not only a sad thing for the world's economy, it is a dangerous position to be in because, to use a hackneyed phrase, power abhors a vacuum. Returning the US to a position of respect and power was the promise so we'll see where it goes.
I apologize for the thread drift but the broader economic mileu in which de-regulation of business, and specifically of the airlines, now over thirty years old, are intimately related to business's (and the airlines') welfare - THE topic under discussion here.
In my experience and not just my opinion, a private corporation in the aviation business will not always, of its own accord, "do the right thing", but will instead privilege commercial priorities over flight safety priorities either until something breaks or until they are caught in a rare audit, rather than taking the more conservative path of prevention. That is my objection to SMS; Oversight is required because capitalists, left on their own, will not behave in the public interest, but in their own narrow interest, which, curiously, is, in the long term, against their own interests as well. We have turned from a manufacturing economy to a speculative economy which values short-term gains in which quarterly results actually mean something. There is only money to be made in such an economy but not a substantive replenishment of capability. Speculation is a shell game, while making things and creating new things is not.
I have seen such unfortunate short-term principles and commercially-drivien decision-making at work and will tell you that if a captain had made these self-same decisions for his/her operation, he/she would be fired if not on the carpet, but SMS protects such management decision-making from "sunshine".
It is not "de-regulation" or "SMS", in and of themselves which is the concern. I agree with your optimistic views described in the quote above but frankly such outcomes are rare. An independent, non-interested third party is required to oversee those private activities which, if not done well, have the power to harm those who are otherwise unable to assess such products on the market, be they water quality, meat quality, cars, drugs or airline travel. We had such a case in Canada where the absentee regulator, (in fact they had been de-regulated) caused the deaths of (if I recall) 26 people across Canada through bad meat. Maple Leaf cleaned up their act but not before having a serious "accident".
The same holds with the aviation industry, obviously. We may part ways on our views of these matters but I can offer from personal experience that the lack of regulation and the absence of the regulator will, not may, provide fertile ground for commercial-priority decision-making in aviation where investors, not the passengers, are the enterprise's first priority.
I too, am "guilty" of passion but I can think of no better reason to be in the present circumstances; acknowledging that things are not coming apart at the seams is part of advancing a more accurate picture of the industry and they are not at all, "dis-integrating". The present move towards the privatization of flight safety here and in the United States is thus far a latent phenomena, the gestation period having just begun. Flight safety people are not unreasonably concerned.
It simply makes no sense – to me or, in my experience, to anyone who knows human nature – for a pilot to believe that his or her salary and benefits package is so “substandard” that he or she may deliberately perform less diligently, fly more sloppily, make decisions less professionally, or take greater risks. If the persons who are hired by an airline are identified as prone to be unaware of the diligence that is essential, the meticulousness that is necessary, the professionalism that is required, or the fact that risk-taking is unwarranted and ill-advised, then the airline must be informed immediately and the airline must take appropriate action before those personality characteristics can contribute to an accident.
My opinion is that safety may be compromised by incompetent, ill-trained, poorly trained, forgetful, overly confident, fatigued, or distracted pilots; but safety is not being compromised by underpaid pilots because they are underpaid. If that were true, why is it that accidents still happen to airlines providing enviable compensation packages to their crewmembers?
I fully agree with your view here. "Poor pay does not cause accidents; it is the lack of professionalism, incompetency, etc etc" which causes accidents.
But I have been saying and re-stating this view here and elsewhere for a number of years now, the latest being on page 3 of this thread which I expect would be read as a matter of form as part of this discussion. It is at the following link:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/3...ml#post5253205
The "pilot pipeline" is emptying. Those with the smarts and talent to fly professionally are, because they are smart, taking a look at other professions and careers because they are looking at airline work, both regional and mainline, (domestic/international) and saying, "I dont' think so".
It costs a candidate roughtly $100,000 to get qualified for airline work. As has been observed, the military is keeping their pilots so that supply is essentially gone.
Let me ask you,
AirRabbit, what intelligent person in his or her right mind, (naivete regarding the industry excepted for a moment), would spend that kind of money to merely
qualify one for a profession that has one away from home every important family day, pays poverty-level wages instead of a living wage and increasingly lousy, crappy wages even for senior members, is wholly disrespected by one's employer, their accountants, the organization's investors and increasingly the flying public, (because "automation" does it all so why should they be paid a high wage?), provides a minimum of training, has their pensions "stolen" through favourable bankruptcy laws and demonstrates in negotiations that pilots (their wages and benefits) are a significant liability in achieving profit and who, in one swift second can find themselves either dead or in court defending themselves against charges of "negligence" or worse in most countries of the world? One can only survive a short period of time on the "love of flying". Being an airline pilot today is extremely nasty, unpleasant, unpredictable business and many who I know have retired miss their compatriots, the flying and the layovers but not the industry. Captain Sullenberger said it best (and continues to do so); you can access his comments before Congress in February at:
http://transportation.house.gov/Medi...llenberger.pdf
Who would ever come into such a profession when there are other, far more lucrative, benign, predictable careers that respect both the individual and family needs and not the mere need for "98.6" in the cockpit seats?
I agree that these are strong views; they deserve to be. This was the career and profession that I loved deeply for 35 years and ached as a young kid to get into, and fought my entire career to defend in my own way as others do even now. I have seen it degraded and desecrated by managements who must deliver double-digit returns on investment for short-term investors here and overseas and who will take from the easiest place, employees, what they can and transfer it over to the profit column.
The single point being made here addresses the question you have asked: The incident and accident rates are going to reflect this kind of thinking, that is driving away "the best and brightest", and still no one has recognized this so-far latent factor.
Shorter posts are certainly desireble but simply cannot be done if even a reasonable discussion is to be had in this kind of format. I have attended enough safety conferences and made enough presentations myself to see the reality of these factors, all of which find agreement among those doing this work. Regardless of one's political turn, conservative or liberal, these are emerging factors which will, not may, affect the industry. It is to the industry's benefit to hearken to these matters if only to maintain their own edge and potential for modest profitability. The alternative is a ten-billion dollar bill which is about what a major fatal accident costs those involved today. Not an investors' dream, and the ethical issues haven't even been addressed in such thinking.