Comments by Martin Alder / BALPA
Ref the comment by Martin Alder, Chairman of the BALPA FSG
Dear AOPIS,
I think that you are somewhat overstating the case on Carbon Monoxide. The fact that ONE person had one detector for some flights and the detector sometimes detected CO, does not constitute many persons for many flights.
Mr Alder
You are mistaken and in doing so are misleading readers at PPrune of the facts.
The facts are as follows:
You say that one person had one detector for some flights. Your comment is incorrect.
BALPA members took many readings of Carbon Monoxide in flight and this data was even presented to the ASHRAE SPC-161 Committee last year.
To date 7 BALPA members and 4 cabin crew members have provided us directly with CO data from the 146 in the UK, all of whom had elevated readings on some flights. Not from ingested ground sources that you refer to, as these were taken in flight. We also have many other recordings from around the world taken on the 146 so this is not just a UK issue.
Therefore when the UK CAA publish a paper on air quality (CAA PAPER 2004/04 - Cabin Air Quality) stating it was OK but was not done during fume event flights, we see this as a deliberate attempt to misinform the public and crews.
As you are a representative of a trade union, we would rather hope your focus would not be the same as industry but rather attempting to provide a duty and care to protecting your members. As you know BALPA has over a dozen sick crew members due to fumes.
The recent BALPA conference conclusions signed by Jim McAuslan the BALPA General Secretary and many others stated that:
There is a workplce problem resulting in chronic and acute illness amongst flight crew (both pilots and cabin crew).
The workplace in which these illnessses are being induced is the aircraft cabin environment.
This, we conclude is resulting in significant flight safety issues, in addition to unacceptable flight crew personnel health implications.
Now that it has been finally agreed within BALPA that crews are sick, lets hope that the BALPA focus is now on stopping more crews and passengers from getting sick short and long term both in the cockpit and in the cabin. We hope that BALPA will work with other unions campaigning these issues in the UK like the IPA / IPF, T&G, ITF.
We will as always work with your association and many others to progress these issues.