Originally Posted by
Newhairdo
Regulators are tasked with ensuring that operators remain compliant with the terms of their AOC, set out within their Ops manuals, which are governed by the applicable regulations. Those regulations are derived from an overarching law, or act. They are specific to the task at hand, ie operating aircraft for (eg) CAT/RPT, Public Transport etc.
They don't, never have, and never should cover employment law. That’s a role for departments other than the aviation regulator. For example, the fair work commission in Australia. The closest an aviation regulator will come to employment law is the airlines approved CTL scheme or FRMS.
Again, pay to fly is an ‘agreement’ between the airline and the pilot. An agreement. No one forces pilots to sign up to P2F schemes, or poor Ts & Cs. There is always a choice to agree the contract.
To be fair, there are far fewer of these schemes than, say, 10-15 years ago, as market forces have forced airlines to change behaviour.
If anyone needs to step up, it’s the unions. They have the power to influence airline contracts.
I think part of the problem is that people keep looking at each regulator in isolation. Aviation authorities aren’t supposed to operate in a vaccum — they’re meant to work in tandem with employment and labour regulators to make sure the whole operation stays lawful.
An AOC isn’t just about flight ops, it’s a licence to operate within the legal framework of the state. If an airline’s crewing or employment structure breaches those laws, it stops being an “industrial” issue and becomes an operator running unlawfully under a state-issued certficate
Take France for example — pay-to-fly is considered illegal under French social and employment law. The DGAC still issues and oversees AOCs under the EASA framework. So if an airline was running that kind of scheme in France, who steps in? The labour inspectorate, the DGAC, or EASA? If none of them act, it’s a pretty clear regulatory gap.
And this isn’t a problem you see in most other industries, because they don’t cross borders or hide behind another regulator’s remit. Aviation sits in that grey area where everyone assumes someone else is responsible — and that’s exactly how these practices survive.
Which is what I think Prometheus is getting at — yet people keep framing it as “choice” or a union issue, when in reality we’re talking about airlines that are clearly breaking the law. I do agree though the unions cowardice and lack of understanding themselves is a primary reason this has been able to continue.