Will;
Aviation should never have allowed itself to become a 'bottom line'
Yessir. "Bottom line thinking" and aviation is a recipe for an accident. It's not that leaders, executives, shareholders aren't aware of this. Parsimony and aviation is a killer mix; that has been understood since the Wrights. It's just that "magical thinking" supplants common sense with the notion that [somehow], it can be got away with "this time". And, because of the past standards, skills, programs and regulations which brought the accident rate down and kept it there, there was some legitimacy to that thinking. No longer. We are now too close to the bone in the drive towards "lo-cost", and even passengers are beginning to sense it. We do ourselves no favour by telling them that "aviation can be done cheaply". It can't - for long.
With Reagan's neoliberalism and concurrent Thatcherism well ensconced and de-regulation of the economy well underway, the airlines, like execs at the banks and trading houses, the execs of airlines were ecstatic over the ability to "do what they want". I recall the mantras at the time in airline magazines and in-house publications - "we welcome the opportunity to compete" was the sales pitch. But they forgot they were in the aviation business where inattention, incompetency and a latent greed have serious outcomes and not just bankruptcy. The causes of last October's crash were merely a variation on the same theme.
Free market has consequences, they will come.
Yes they will and have, but not for CEOs and other executives even today eight months after the October crash. Public money has bailed out capitalism's free market, rewarding those same personal and corporate qualities that brought the crash in the first place.
In the US and Canada, the
privatization of profit and the socialization of risk have made wealthy men and women out of greed and incompetence while creating the New Serfdom out of a generation of displaced, unemployed or poorly-paid employees who, having lost their houses and/or pensions, have been dumped by the wayside as millstones around profit's neck. The dismantling of "the welfare state" for people is complete while the welfare state is in strong form for failed enterprise.
These are not hegemonic, political rantings of the left wing but statements of an increasing pubic reality for millions. But while the plight of airline pilots today pales in comparison that is not the point of these off-thread comments. I have been writing for about a dozen years now after it was obvious what was coming through the dismantling of the post-war economy (Bretton-Woods, et al), that low wages, atrocious treatment, workhouse productivity demands and a destroyed future were not the only serious social consequences; these social, and only partially-economic, realities were going to become a flight safety problem. It was profit that drove denial of these consequences, not lack of awareness. The principle in bold font above was
well understood by business "leaders" then, as now. Witness the remarks from the quoted article in the previous post:
Philip Trenary, president and CEO of Pinnacle Airlines, which is the parent company of Colgan Air [stated in the article . . .], "Let me stress one thing, Capt. Renslow was a fine man by all accounts," Trenary said. But he added, "Had we known what we know now, no, he would not have been in that seat."
In my opinion this is a disingenuous comment. It his responsibility as the Accountable Executive to know or to ensure that his organization was aware. That is what SMS [Safety Management Systems - the "new safety environment"] means.
In response to speculation that Renslow was impaired by fatigue, Trenary told the committee the fatigue policy of both Pinnacle and Colgan airlines is clear. "If a pilot is fatigued for any reason, all they have to do is say so and they are excused from duty. The night of (Flight) 3407, we did have 11 reserve pilots available."
Again in my opinion, I think this is another disingenuous statement. In fact, the law requires that a pilot not fly if he or she is fatigued or "likely to be fatigued". Airline policy fails however, to deal with this legal requirement. What Mr. Trenary does not mention but what is keenly understood by all airline pilots is, if they are "excused from duty" due to fatigue, they are
not paid for the trip. A pilot is therefore punished financially if he or she does not fly due to being fatigued. "Booking off sick" is not the solution, not only because it masks the problem and forces pilots to pay for what the law requires, but also because sick-pay is often 10% lower than regular wages but fatigue is not being sick - it is being fatigued.
Captain Babbitt, now in charge of the FAA has recently made some very tough statements on these matters. Let us hope that the air carriers hearken to the message but let us hope that such hearkening does not stop there - the flying public needs to listen up as well.
The issue is not whether Renslow or Shaw should have been in the seat. That issue can be fully examined and hopefully will be, but neither of their circumstances and/or decision-making to fly were (or are) rare. Today it is more the rule than the exception that pilots will fly fatigued and sick simply because of the airline policies described above.
The issue at hand here is the commentary from hindsight, excusing executives and placing sole blame on the crew. While the captain is the captain is the captain and carries ultimate responsibility, so too does the "captain of industry".
The industry has only begun to receive hints that it should engage in some serious navel-gazing. For once, the regulator, at least in the US, (Canada's regulator is still infatuated with SMS), is ahead of these trends and may actually forestall a reversal of the industry's excellent safety record.