% - Continued from previous post
Retention of experienced pilots
In sub section c, I explained that in the past a pilot would join an airline and stay with that
airline for their whole career. This was due to a strict seniority system (date of joining)
which determined, amongst other things, promotion. If the pilot, after a number of years,
left one airline and joined another then they would start at the bottom again and, from a
promotion view point, the time spent in the previous airline is wasted. These days, in low
cost carriers at least, the seniority system tends to be much less rigid, if it exists at all, and
therefore I could spend many years at Jetstar and have a more junior pilot take a
promotion ahead of me at the discretion of management. This has already happened on
numerous occasions in the history of Jetstar. It means that the guarantees that were
provided previously are no longer there and that to leave is not with the same risks as 1; I
may not get the promotion that I would be due under a strict seniority system and 2; If I
leave and go to another airline I may take a promotion at the expense of another pilot at
that airline and thereby do not take such a risk to leave the first airline. This does,
however, mean that the first airline looses my experience and possibly replaces me with a
first time captain who, now, is a new captain flying with first officers with 200 flight
hours under the Jetstar cadet scheme. This may be okay as a single event but if you end
up with a mass exodus of captains from one airline due to, say, a foreign airline setting up
a base in Australia offering better terms and conditions, then this becomes a serious
safety issue, with inexperienced captains flying, constantly, with inexperienced first
officers. This brings me to my next point.
In the past, apart from a strict seniority system, airline pilots were paid well and the
conditions associated with the job were also good. Additionally, due to the fact the pilots
were well supported with resources to do their job well, as opposed to low cost carriers,
the job was easier. Today, however, in low cost carriers such as Jetstar this is not the case
and we are not, by world standards, well paid. Jetstar A330 pilots would be some of the
lowest paid in the western world. This manifest itself as a negative safety outcome due to
lack of retention of experienced pilots when, for instance, the new foreign airline opens
its base in Australia and for the reasons stated above there is a mass exodus of
experienced crew, leaving a hole in the experience base. It is by no accident that Australia
has the exemplary aviation safety record that it has. That it does has is, historically, due to
well structured training systems in airlines, due to stable working conditions and due to
well maintained aircraft operated by highly experienced crew. As the industry stands
now, I feel that the jury is out on what the next few years will hold if there are not
significant changes made in the legislation that allows airlines to now operate in very
different ways to that which has seen our airline safety record as the envy of the rest of
the world.
Type rating and recurrent training
I have covered the negative aspects of the way type ratings are obtained under sub section
c.
With regard to recurrent training, the point that I will make is that once trained to the
‘line’ on a particular aircraft, and apart from some recurrent courses through the year,
there really isn’t any training. The great majority of time spent in simulators is not
training at all but, instead, checking. A great deal of opportunity is missed to improve
standards by taking this approach. Yes, one has to meet a minimum standard and as long
as this is met there is no training. Once again this comes down to a lack of commitment
by these airlines to improving standards by committing funds, not to meet minimum
standards, but to exceed them.
Capacity of CASA
Casa have in the past allowed Jetstar to vary minimum industry standards to the detriment
of safety for commercial reasons. That is cost cutting.
As one example, is the reduction of required flight attendants on the Airbus A321. In
their constant pursuit of cost cutting, Jetstar approached CASA with a view of reduction
below minimum crew. This involved many changes to standard procedures to make
things work. This means that there are different procedures in place, both normal and
emergency, between the A320 and the A321. It needs to be understood that pilots and
flight attendants fly on both of these aircraft. Some flight attendants also fly on the A330.
This lack of standardisation affects safety and, adds pressure to, and makes crew jobs
more difficult. On the A321, due to the crew reduction, the cabin manager is, during
takeoff and landing, up the front by themselves, when normally and on the A320, two
crew are at the front of the aircraft. During the pre-flight briefing, passengers are required
to be asked to help with an evacuation even when all crew are conscious. It is one thing to
brief passengers on the use of an over wing exit but quite another to require them to use a
primary door just so that Jetstar can reduce the crew compliment by one. What if the
passenger wants to have an alcoholic drink or two in-flight? Are they still fit to be
assisting a flight attendant to operate doors during an emergency evacuation? During a
ditching, the procedure for the first officer is varied on the A321 when compared to the
A320 due, once again, to Jetstar reducing below minimum crew to cut costs. This means
that the first officer needs to remember to vary this procedure depending on the aircraft
type involved. All of this has a negative impact on safety, complicating further, an
already complicated operation and I feel that CASA have erred in granting this approval
to Jetstar based on commercial cost cutting and have negatively impacted safety in the
process.
This will not be the only instance of CASA approving company requests, for commercial
reasons, which have a negative impact on safety.
Legislative immunity to pilots reporting safety matters
Pilots need to be provided with legislative immunity when reporting safety operational
matters as this will encourage the reporting of such matters, without the fear of reprisal
and will thereby have a positive effect on safety.
j. other related matters
1. Fatigue risk management system
Australian airlines should be required by law to adhere to a common and acceptable
FRMS in order to combat poor and unsafe rostering practices.
2. Flight attendant training
Jetstar recently cut by around half, the training provided to cabin crew. This has resulted
in new flight attendants being stood down by both Cabin Managers and Captains due to a
lack of operational knowledge. In one instance, a crew member did not know how to arm
an aircraft door at the start of the flight even though they had completed training and had
been cleared to the line.
Airlines should have to meet acceptable training standard for flight attendant training.
3. Operating manuals
Jetstar pilots are not provided with up to date company documents for study purposes.
Instead, we are provided with a CD with these documents on them. This type of
information dissemination has a number of problems. Jetstar procedures are constantly
changing, and after being thrown a disk with thousands of pages of information, amended
as necessary, one is left with much work trying to work out what has changed. It is very
difficult to effectively study on a computer screen and in the format provided, it is not
possible to highlight text. Further, Jetstar do not provide equipment to read these disk and
don’t seem concerned that some pilots may not have a computer and therefore have no
way of accessing critical procedural information. Even our cabin crew are provided with
hard copies of their manuals. I don’t think that the travelling public would think it good
that the pilots flying their aircraft were not up to date with the latest information.
Jetstar should be required to provide its pilots with up to date manuals in hard copy form
or at least give the pilot the option of such.
4. Qantas group safety survey
A Qantas group airline safety survey has recently been conducted, with input sought from
all staff. If this information is available to this Senate enquiry, then this may provide
some interesting comparisons between the views of Qantas Airlines’ pilots and those of
their Jetstar counterparts. I feel that the views of safety in the respective airlines will be
vastly different and that Jetstar will be seen as much less safe, as an airline, by its pilots.
If this is the case, then it would show a lower level of safety in the low cost model, as
seen by the pilots, and that, in Australia, would be unacceptable.
5. Endorsement GST cost
If able, this Senate enquiry should investigate the fact that Jetstar claim the endorsement
cost GST back as a business cost and pockets this money, even though the pilot has
ultimately paid this money and not Jetstar.
6. Legislative powers granted to airline flight departments and safety departments
If able, this Senate enquiry should investigate the possibility of providing legislative
powers to airline flight department and/or safety departments so that they alone, are
responsible for the safety of the airline operation and have the power to determine how
and to where the airline will operate, with safety as its primary focus, with severe
penalties for not operating with safety as the primary focus.
Airline safety departments should be made, by law, to be separate and independent from
the commercial departments of airlines, just as the judicial system is separate from
government, in the interests of safety.
If an airline, such as Jetstar, is to maintain the ‘privilege’ of having the responsibility to
determine its own safety outcomes by the regulator, then they need to take this
responsibility seriously by allocating sufficient resources to allow safety departments to
do their work and, indeed, should be required to do so by the law. Jetstar, I feel strongly,
do not provide even nearly enough of these resources and they do not take safety nearly
seriously enough.
7. Pilot Morale
Since the inception of Jetstar in 2004 and even prior to this in Impulse Airlines, this pilot
group have ‘bent over backwards’ to ensure the success of the Airline during its
continued growth in the absence of suitable operational resources as has been explained
elsewhere in this document. They have accepted substandard wages and conditions, by
world standards, to ensure the viability of the model. All that they have expected in return
is for Jetstar management to honour the commitments, both legal and inferred, that they
have made to this group. Of particular note, are notices written by then C.E.O Allen
Joyce in the lead up to the 2008 Jetstar Pilot’s EBA vote. These notices indicated that if
the 2008 EBA was voted in the affirmative, that this would ensure that the pilots covered
by it would share in the future growth of the aircraft covered by it, most notably the
Boeing 787. The 2008 EBA was accepted by the majority of the pilot group on this basis.
As it now turns out, Jetstar decide that they are no longer willing to play by the rules set
in good faith by EBA 2008 and by contrast have decided that they will offshore, in one
instance, these jobs to overseas ports and in the second instance, start up a new contract
company within Australia, no less, featuring, no doubt, based on past performance, vastly
reduced terms and conditions. All the while reducing its wages bill and reneging on its
commitment that it made to its pilots in 2008.
The cause and effect of this is difficult to reconcile. The cause is the way that Jetstar
operate at an industrial level and is in no way covered by this Senate inquiry. The effect
however, is the potential to have a very negative safety outcome for aviation and is
therefore absolutely covered by this inquiry. I have described previously how
complicated that this Jetstar operation is and it needs no further expansion. With such an
operation however, comes a requirement for, at times, absolute concentration of thought.
In a company where a pilot, rightly or wrongly, feels to be under constant ‘attack’ this
can prove difficult. I can tell this inquiry through this submission that, rightly or wrongly,
a great deal of time on Jetstar flight decks is spent discussing the industrial relations
strategy of Jetstar management. This probably happens on every Jetstar flight deck every
day to varying degrees.
Pilots are a different employee group to any other by virtue of the fact that we tend to be
very long term. Contrary to Jetstar managements’ appalling ‘catch cry’ that they don’t
expect their pilots to last more than around five years, as we will be ‘burnt out by then’,
(this is a stolen catch cry from Ryan Air CEO Michael O’Leary) the vast majority of
pilots will be around for many years longer than this. Indeed, the average pilot will be
around many times longer than the average manager, including senior management. This
is why pilots take the future direction of a company so seriously. Long after the managers
have left, taking their KPI performance based bonuses, achieved through cost cutting,
with them, it is the new management and the long term employees who are left to pick up
the pieces and try to make things work. The attempted private equity buy out of Qantas
by, amongst others, TPG and Macquarie springs to mind and the open joy that this was
met with by then CEO Geoff Dixon, based on greed. Qantas would very probably be
bankrupt now, given that the whole transaction was based on debt and that the future, at
the time, would see the global financial crisis take place and claim a great many
companies worldwide with high debt profiles.
In my 25 years plus, in aviation, I have never seen morale amongst a group of pilots
nearly as low as that of this Jetstar group. I strongly believe that the Australian travelling
public deserve much better than to be flown around by pilots of a major Australian airline
who feel under constant threat and who are worried about their futures.
Jetstar management have, I can confirm, been warned by some very senior pilots, who
see what goes on on Jetstar flight decks, that they have a major problem in this regard.
The reply by these managers is typical, and to quote, ‘’we don’t think we have a
problem’’. I wish to state for the record, that I strongly feel that this low morale amongst
the Jetstar pilot group is a huge problem and has the potential for a negative safety
outcome.
If a solution to this problem is beyond the scope of this inquiry, then CASA should be
commissioned to recognise that the problem exists in the first instance, and to then work
with Jetstar and the pilot body to find solutions to its cause.
Conclusion;
The low cost model generally and the Jetstar model specifically, are operated with
minimum resources allocated to them in the interests of cost savings.
These airlines are operated to the limit in all areas, with the allocation of resources based
on a perfect outcome every time. In reality, however, this is never the case. As soon as
one aircraft runs late, for instance, the operation, which relies on the perfect outcome
each time, is adversely affected.
James Reason, an aviation risk expert, devised a simple model some years ago, which I
have included as a diagram. The model consists of slices of Swiss cheese lined up on end.
Each one represents a layer of resistance, representing procedures and processes that are
designed to ensure safety. Like all systems, there will be flaws and these are represented
by the holes in the cheese. Invariably, one layer will be penetrated via a hole, only to
have the next layer trap the threat and the problem is averted. When it just happens that
something goes wrong, and it so happens that all of the holes line up, then the treat gets
though each layer that is designed to trap it and the accident occurs. The first of these
layers tend to be systems and procedures controlled by senior management and are
representative of the way that the airline is run. Pilots tend to be the last layer of this
model and thereby represent the last chance to save the operation from an accident or an
incident occurring and this is often the case.
When an airline is run right to the limit every day, in all aspects, as I hope that I have
been successful in describing throughout this submission, then the odds of the holes all
lining up are vastly increased.
As detailed at the start of this submission, my name and contact details must remain
confidential and appear nowhere in any document that could reveal my identity.
SENTATE INQUIRY INTO PILOT TRAINING AND AIRLINE SAFETY
Summary
Pilot experience
An explanation of how complicated an RPT jet operation is, particularly one that is of
the low cost model and my view that it is no place for an inexperienced pilot.
USA 1500 flight hour requirement for RPT
An explanation of the Jetstar minimum experience requirements, as approved by the
regulator, the fact that these match the new USA minimum requirements for RPT and the
fact that these US requirements were introduced as a result of an accident and that we
should act prior to not after an event.
Pilot recruitment and pay for training schemes
An explanation of the way that recruitment and training in airlines used to be conducted
and that today it is not as good as then, even though the operation of low cost carriers is a
complicated one and now, the first time that a pilot will fly the aircraft is with passengers
on board.
Retention of experienced pilots
An explanation that a strict seniority system and good pay and conditions in the past
ensured that airlines retained their most experienced crew members and that today with
low cost carriers possibly having neither of these two things, that experienced pilots may
be hard to retain.
Type rating and recurrent training
An explanation that simulators are not, but could be, used to much greater effect for
recurrent training to not just meet, but to improve standards.
Capacity of CASA
An explanation that CASA have previously granted concessions to Jetstar, requested for
commercial reasons, and that these concessions have an adverse affect on safety.
Legislative immunity to pilots reporting safety matters
Self explanatory.
j. Other related matters
Self explanatory.
James Reason’s Model.