I am now convinced, more than ever, that this is purely an industrial relations issue, and is nothing to do with safety.
The safety regulator, CASA, sees no need for LAMEs to conduct pre-departure inspections. The pilots and their various unions, who would seem to have an obvious vested interest in the safety of the planes they fly, have been notably silent on the issue.
The only people making any noise about this are those who fear that their entrenched work practices will be threatened.
In a move that smacks of desperation, the LAME’s union has now chosen to try to intimidate the paying passengers with a misleading scare campaign.
Outside Australia, appropriately trained and authorised pilots conduct pre-departure inspections on airline jets thousands of times each day. Yet the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association would have us believe that this arrangement is entirely unsafe.
Who are they kidding?
From :
smh.com.au
Airport grounds safety-checks ad
By Joseph Kerr and AAP
September 9 2002
Sydney Airport has banned an advertising billboard that could have raised passenger fears about air safety just before the September 11 anniversary.
The ad, saying "Would you get on a plane without it having a safety check?", was designed to create awareness of aircraft engineers' concerns about future regulatory changes.
Under the Civil Aviation Safety Authority plan, licensed engineers would no longer have to check aircraft for every flight. However, a spokesman for Sydney Airport said the ad had been rejected because "the subject material ... could have caused increased anxiety about safety and security amongst the travelling public".
"The timing was completely inappropriate as it was scheduled to go up close to the anniversary of September 11."
[mostly irrelevant section about bag screening omitted]
Meanwhile, the national secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association, David Kemp, said the safety billboards were designed to draw attention to plans to downgrade the role of licensed engineers, who had years of training.
"If the airports are serious about not alarming the public they should be publicly opposing the ... proposal rather than trying to censor our campaign," Mr Kemp said.
Under the new safety plans licensed engineers would still check planes before and after each day's flights.
But pilots would be given additional training to allow them to do the work when the plane was on the ground.