AltFlaps;
Bollox to the unions!
If an unsafe flight or event has occured that requires an internal investigation because of a flight recorder event (or crew filed ASR), then the data can and should be used appropriately.
All this crap about unions and their objections in straight from the 1970s.
If you are a professional crew and flew in a professional manor, then what's the problem?
If it were only that simple!
I understand what you're saying, have heard it from many quarters as we try to establish an FDA Program and I know why you say it.
First, I ask of you the same understanding with the opposite view, for very good reasons with which you may even possibly agree.
It's very easy to say no pilot's data should be protected if, a) if you're management, b) a regulator or a potential prosecutor, c) don't have a FOQA Program, d) don't have a union, e) aren't flight crew flying airliners.
Which is it please, or are you a regular line pilot but still believe that "bollox" is the answer?
Here are some thoughts on this. The following applies to non-Asian countries and any other states including non-ICAO states where we know that FOQA data is used purely for disciplinary measures.
In announcing "bollox to the unions", please consider this: if data loses the protections afforded under pilot/management agreements and is instead made available to those wishing to fire pilots using FOQA data, that door swings both ways. Pilots will instantly begin requesting and using data in all manner of operational, industrial and political battles and it won't stop there. The c/c's will be after the data to "prove" turbulence injury cases. Then passengers...
If the airline management gets the data to do with what they will, so will the courts, the media and the very same pilots' unions which you seem to hate will demand and ultimately achieve the same level of access "in the name of the public good", especially if there is an accident. It will be "no-holds-barred" and "bollox to the unions" may become an embarrassing utterance.
In truth the protection of safety information and flight data gathered under FOQA/FDA Programs is really a lot more complicated than that. It is an old, trite saying now but still applies: Be careful what you wish for.
Edited to add the following:
At the same time, ASRs are not "get-out-of-jail-cards", nor should FOQA agreements be a suit-of-iron which protects pilots against negligence or intentional acts of non-compliance. Perhaps this addresses the point you are making which, if I interpret correctly, I am in full agreement.
Again however, if the data shows intentional non-compliance (and this is not as hard to detect as some may believe), this is not simply a matter of "getting the guy involved and whacking him/her with a rolled newspaper or worse". Do that, and FOQA is out the door or, at best, a sham. This is where agreement with the pilots comes in. Any agreement with the pilots, union or no, that is worth signing will include ways processes and procedures for dealing with such non-compliance as will any safety reporting policy worth signing on to.
That way, if a repeat series of safety events shows up in the data belonging to the same person, the safety problem which clearly exists and which is beyond mere "human factors", is handled according to established procedures. Some advocate showing "such people" the door. Unless the event is negligent in the extreme or criminal, (both of which should be covered in any safety policy and agreement), such an outcome is expensive and produces no solution worth having.
The purpose of the agreement to which both the union and management must be signatories, is to deal rationally with serious safety matters before they turn into an accident. If it's merely used to whack pilots, FOQA as a pre-emptive safety tool is finished and exists merely as a corporate box-tick until the next accident, and, as I have iterated here before, any organization that collects safety data and doesn't do anything with it or merely uses it to punish, is placing not it's pilots, but itself (and perhaps its very existence) in jeopardy should an accident occur. Just ask QANTAS about their Bangkok accident, the antecedents of which were "in the data" years before.
Unfortunately, it is only after an accident that managers, senior executives, bean-counters and perhaps even shareholders, sit up and take notice (if they're not up on charges).
I suspect we're in agreement on fundamentals. But dismissing the union with a "bollocks" would eventually render any data-program ineffective and place the enterprise itself at risk. SMS, such as it is in some locales, is too far along now to return to the seventies, an unenlightened enforcement culture which did not prevent but contributed to the accident rate experienced at the time.