WhyIsThereAir;
This isn't the conversation of professionals. This is the conversation of indentured servants that know that they won't be paid enough to keep themselves healthy, and are in fear of their lives to be caned half to death at the slightest whim of the Master.
We may be sure that this type of conversation was not an isolated one, limited to these two pilots; this conversation is taking place in most cockpits of connector and major airlines today. Use Chapter 11 to steal pensions from employees who have paid into such pensions is simply one symptom of the problem.
Captain Sullenberger's comments before Congress in February is saying the same thing that all pilots at all airlines are saying. The conversation that took place in the Colgan cockpit is no different than the thousands of conversations now taking place in other cockpits.
To say that "low pay does not cause accidents", is trivially true but it misses the point completely and misapprehends the problem. No airline pilot I know would permit his or her skills to reduce because of low pay. It is a testimony to the professionalism of air crews that, despite low pay, no pension, few benefits, they continue to maintain very high standards of skill and knowledge, which airline managements know very well is a work ethic that can be historically exploited with impunity. Such short-term thinking is now widespread because it is "successful". However, low pay does not attract the best and brightest, does not permit first-class training environments and regimes, does not provide the tools necessary for professionals to do their job safely and properly.
Because they are so focussed on "the bottom line" and cost control and know less and less about aviation, it is no longer an exaggeration to state that airline managements not only do NOT know how to do flight safety work, they have no notion of what it takes to "do aviation" safely and no notion of why the industry is as safe as it is today. For those far away from the "coal face" and who do not see what flight crews see every day, they are "satisfied" with current levels of safety, unaware of the forces now gathering to change that trend, fundamentally. In fact, when it finally becomes visible to even the resistant or furthest-removed from the operation that the trend has changed, they will not have the slightest notion of why, and therefore will not know what to do to change, the original causes buried in complexity and lack of comprehension.
SMS, as originally conceived is far better alternative than the "enforce and discipline" methods of the old ways, but under tremendous economic pressures and faciliated largely by ignorance of the principles of aviation and flight safety work, SMS has become the de-regulation of flight safety. An enterprise which must at once make a profit for the shareholder while making decisions which are contrary to that primary goal, cannot deal with such a conflict of interest alone. What has occurred to Southwest Airlines, American and others in the US is already substantive proof of this. In Canada, that lesson has yet to be learnt but it will be, one way or another.
While perennially true, it is abundantly true today under difficult economic circumstances that the support for complex flight safety programs is extremely difficult to obtain and where done, the data and information results are not only unpopular and unwelcome but are "like Greek" to airline managements because they cannot understand the data and cannot interpret what it means for the operation. Nor are they receptive to input or data, preferring to dwell in plausible deniability rather than knowledge. Such programs require a long-term vision of balanced values of profit-making with intelligent awareness of risk. That is expensive. Instead however, airline passengers have been told for 30 years now, "how cheap" it is to fly. It is if, as Captain Sullenberger states, airlines use their employees "as ATM machines".
That illusion that our passengers have been sold on is now coming home to roost. Passengers have legitimate complaints when, because the airlines' resources and employee ranks are so thin and so poorly paid that an airline cannot look after its passengers during IRROPS, Irregular Operations, but the seeds of those complaints were sown in nickels and dimes for fares when in truth, it takes a lot more money than $39
return to fly an A320 for a two-hour flight.
Again, it is sad that the Colgan crew is the center of focus. Like the Lexington Kentuck crew, the Colgan crew are the industry's "canaries in the mine". It is apparent that they did what they were trained to do. They never set out to have an accident, (why would anyone even think such a thought?) but were put into circumstances of which they were not aware because it was "normal", (the notion of the "normalization of deviance" is well worth examining in and of itself). Especially Shaw, did not and could not know that she was at a disadvantage. I recall the early days well - I would have done anything to fly for a living, just as any eager young pilot would. It is the responsibility of airlines to ensure that such eagerness is not taken advantage of or permitted to blind one to the realities of real aviation - carrying passengers. Instead, airllines now see employees, "indentured serfs" - as liabilities to profit and have taken away all incentive to come to the profession and do well. Their intention at the negotiating table is to take away all they can and, for pilots, fly them to the FARs or CARs flight time and duty day limits.
This is an extended conversation within the industry itself but not for investors who's habits of no thoughts towards employees or the health of their investment other than short-term gain, is itself short-term thinking.
One does NOT run an airline based upon "quarterly" thinking but that is precisely how airlines are being run today.
There is now plenty of evidence to base change upon. Whether passengers, employees and perhaps investors see that evidence or not is open to question.
The turned-around phrase, "
I'll see it when I believe it" applies - the facts and the trends may be staring one in the face but until one believes it one cannot see it.
It will be the public and passenger outcry, (not to mention the insurers' outcry) to the change in accident statistics and not a willingness to change that will govern the outcome of this major crisis within the airline industry. Airline managements today don't know what they don't know so the statistics are going to remind them. The Colgan accident and crew, just like the Comair crew at Lexington, Kentucky, and their unsuspecting passengers were among those tragically to do so. However, the lesson is at great risk of being lost and the pattern repeated.