J.O.
Precisely, and I hope this re-focuses this important thread on the original topic of how FDA is used at various carriers. I, and I suspect many, are deriving great benefit in this "general meeting", comparing others' programs and issues. Gentlemen?...
At our airline we have an agreement between the airline and the pilots' association which has provisions for dealing with those very rare cases which can come along, and which you cite. Very definitely the matter is one for peer review/counseling and the airline management trusts this process.
In fact, generally if it gets to this stage, (either via FDM, ASRs or pilots coming in to talk), it is an HFACs problem and not merely a flight safety issue.
The union too, is fully supportive of the process. Notwithstanding our frustrations with support and involvement in terms of what the data is telling us (and which we convey to our operations people on a regular basis), our airline is very supportive of this aspect of the program, which, as you probably well know, obviously involves a great deal of trust between the two groups.
I can say with a high degree of confidence that our airline would never use the data in an inappropriate manner. Firing a pilot using FDA data would finish the program but that doesn't mean we are gun-shy with the data - where appropriate, the crew is contacted, discussions had, explanations offered and, again where appropriate, we create animations and presentations of the event and use them in recurrent training sessions and other venues appropriately discrete and de-identified.
At the same time, Flight Operations expect that the issues, as they arise in the data, will be dealt with as per the agreement. That is where the resources and support issues begin to get difficult as there just aren't the people to do the work but we're slowly making progress.
In fact, it is the pilots who desire and use the program (in terms of calls to the association FDA reps) - quite a reversal from the usual, I understand.
Kind regards,
PJ2
Last edited by PJ2; 14th Jul 2008 at 21:20.