Also remember that airline economic restructuring has safety implications too:
Read the following report:
Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) Sponsored Research Study into the Flight Deck Implications of Airline Restructuring
At:
http://www.icon-consulting.com/study...s/reportv2.pdf
I quote:
The consequences of recent developments have the potential to affect flight deck performance. Airline mergers and alliances will change the organisational culture in which individuals work, and this in turn may influence individual performance. They are likely, also, to increase the incidence of multi-national flight crew. As more flexibility is required of airline staff, effects such as changes in morale and increased fatigue may be seen.
and:
Unsympathetic rostering increases fatigue, upsets sleep patterns, reduces morale and has a detrimental effect on the personal life of crew. In some cases this is combined with a reduced ratio of crew per aircraft, leading to a loss of flexibility and pressure to fly despite personal welfare.
Significantly:
Captains are increasingly being required to make economic decisions, which is often counter to their traditional role of safely flying the aircraft. There is sometimes a dilemma between safety and economics: a Captain has the responsibility for the safety of a flight but may be blamed by management if he or she is thought to have taken a commercially detrimental decision. If a pilot succumbs to commercial pressure and as a result is involved in an incident, he cannot, in law, defend his position by saying that the company pressured him to take the actions that he did.
Some pilots find this dilemma difficult to resolve on a day to day basis.