Dear all
I'm hoping some of the longterm regulars may recognise me - I've not been on pprune for some time.
My name is Ian Shoesmith and I am a BBC News journalist. For the past three years or so, I've been interested in aviation stories and have produced a couple of major investigations into safety concerns within the industry.
They have all involved a great deal of time and resources, and we have painstakingly weighed up all of the evidence before deciding to publish our findings. Examples of my work include the following:
BBC NEWS | UK | Pilots raise fears over fatigue
BBC NEWS | UK | Air passengers' safety 'at risk'
Each investigation involved me speaking -- in complete confidence -- to dozens of pilots and other aviation professionals. Please be rest assured that any conversations we have will be in the strictest confidence, and completely off-record unless we agree otherwise.
At the moment, I am keen to test an allegation put forward to me by a source within the aviation engineering community. He told me that he fears safety is being compromised because engineers are coming under increasing pressure from pilots and management "not to rock the boat" and to turn a blind eye to serious defects.
He also revealed that more than 80% of all faults are reported on or after homeward legs rather than after downroute sectors. The clear inference being that aircraft -- with problems such as bald tyres, defective hydraulics, engine problems -- are being flown back to the UK in the full knowledge that they should be "no go". Furthermore, my source claims, problems with aircraft are known about, and discussed verbally, but are not written into the aircraft log if it is known the problems can be fixed quickly.
Finally, it is claimed the CAA are not being as robust as they could be owing to the fact that it benefits financially from regulating a growing industry. Parallels were drawn between the way it regulates airlines, and the way the FSA regulated the banks.
Now obviously the above allegations are very serious, and are worthy of further investigation. Anybody in the know can contact me by email:
[email protected] or phone 07769 977665.
Best wishes
Ian Shoesmith
BBC News