ATC Watcher;
" how much will it cost" and " how long will it take and who will pay for the delay ?" are now the norm..
And that is in large measure, why airlines are struggling with costs. They think employees are the ATM from which they can transfer cash from the liability column to profit column when in fact working smarter...works. Penny-wise means you dismiss or negotiate down, those highly-dedicated, competent, "expensive resources" that airlines used to have like pilots, aeronautical engineers, maintenance people who knew nuts and bolts and had the time and rest to do the job right. In many cases those people have left or been "retired" or the entire departments of engineering (including sheet metal work, heavy maintenance) have been shut down because "it can be done cheaper through outsourcing". There is a huge gap now where entire generations of experience used to reside at a major airline. Too expensive.
Instead, we have "quarterly-thinking" and a "what has
your department done for the bottom line lately?" No one likes to be in the line of fire so people will cut costs to make the boss happy, comfortable in the knowledge that it is "the boss" who will take responsibility if something bad occurs.
Also, airlines hit, ding, smash into and otherwise wreck airplanes on the ground while servicing and taxing them to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. That is directly off the bottom line and that number has not changed in decades because, while organizations know why and have the data, they are not learning - the expertise is either rare or non-existent. Part of it is management-labour issues (where "soldiering" (working slow) and sabotage are minor issues; the vast majority is "accidental" due to competency (training) and production pressures (rushing, lest one get blamed for the delay, making one's department "look good").
Airline delays drive these kinds of losses, but are a curious thing. Passengers focus on minutes and airlines watch their stats like hawks. However, most delays are shorter than the time we all voluntarily stand in line at Starbucks for our morning latte. Do we rag on the girl behind the counter? Nope. Do we phone Starbucks' headquarters and does Starbucks keep statistics about lineups and "delays"? Does any sales organization? How long do each of us wait on the phone, pressing number after menu number and never once hang up and tell the company who's wasting your time, to Get Stuffed!?
Yet a 30-minute delay is HUGE.
That creates production pressures that translate into accidents - each minor, but...hundreds of millions of dollars per year because airplanes are expensive to keep on the ground and repair.
This is perception on the part of the airline, in fact business, nothing more. They focus on such statistics and it drives the monthly agendas at departmental meetings where "results and goals" are discussed and pressures are created.
This is absence of learning how to deal with information that is available through data gathering programs like FOQA, LOSA, ASAP etc. Airlines get rid of the "expensive resources" but those resources have experience, knowledge, depth, patience and comprehension, none of which have a column in an organzation's balance sheet.
If an employee saves the company some money, there is no column in which that saving may be entered. Each saving is "invisible" precisely because it is always, "what have you done for us lately?" accounting.
So, if a flight data program saves an airline ten million dollars in engine downtime and repairs because of turbine overtemps, the "savings" are not entered against costs. The program never gets formal, accounting credit in the sense of "what would have been the costs had we not....(fill in the substantial blanks) but when discussions about "cost control" arise as they do, it is always to cut without thought or undertstanding.
Safety programs are all about telling an airline when they are too close to the bone. But if the executive can't even understand the information because the airline doesn't have sufficient resources to interpret the data or create reports, the program is a box-tick and a further waste of the organization's resources.
Sending expertise packing because they are an expensive resource and great bang-for-buck in the cost-cutting department, is, in a complex, technical, risk-intensive enterprise, while it may look good to stock holders, is seriously pound foolish.
Until some courageous executive with more knowledge about aviation than marketing and advertising come, about what makes aviation tick and what makes it safe, comes along with a longer-term vision than mere bottom lines, the statistics and what I call "The Turn" in aviation flight safety will continue.
Much of this, including flight saftey work, can be summed up thus: Nothing succeeds like failure, and nothing fails like success. PJ2