Safety is our Priority
This gem was posted in the "Industry News" section of intra-crapex yesterday:
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ATA: Airlines would cut 26,700 jobs if FAA implements new pilot test regulations
Posted On: 20 Sep 2011
The US Air Transport Assn (ATA) said an analysis by consultancy Oliver Wyman demonstrates that the pilot fatigue and duty time rules FAA is proposing to implement would "have severe negative effects on US airline employment… while reducing service, especially to small communities."
In a letter sent last week to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is conducting a final review of the pilot fatigue regulations proposed last year by FAA, ATA VP and general counsel David Berg cautioned that "the proposed rule would cause… approximately 26,700 direct airline and air cargo carrier job losses."
Under the proposed rule, pilots would be required to have "nine hours for the opportunity to rest" before reporting for flight duty, and the clock would not start ticking until he or she is "behind closed doors" in a hotel or other designated rest place, according to FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt. Regulations currently require flight crew members to have a minimum of eight hours of rest time between flight duty periods. However, the rules do not define rest time, meaning transit time from an airport to a hotel may count as rest time.
"If it takes two hours to get to the hotel, you still get nine hours," he emphasised at a press conference last year after FAA issued the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on pilot fatigue and duty time.
This and other provisions "will drive job loss because airlines will not be able to raise prices sufficiently to meet the new costs that the rule imposes because of consumer price sensitivity," Berg wrote to OMB. "This situation will force airlines to cut capacity, in particular service to marginally profitable and unprofitable routes—many of them serving small and rural communities that depend on air transportation to connect to the rest of the country and world. Reducing capacity and service means fewer employees."
Oliver Wyman said its analysis showed that the new regulations would add US$1.96 billion a year in total costs for US mainline passenger and cargo airlines. The analysis placed "specific focus on the cost of requiring additional pilots to conduct the same amount of flying and on the operational impacts of the rule," the consultancy said.
"This substantial increase in costs was estimated to lead to the elimination of marginal flights that no longer met individual airline minimum profitability thresholds. Overall employment reductions required to operate the reduced number of flights were then estimated
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It's bad enough that these "consultants" are putting a price on safety, but then they try to sell it by saying that improved safety will cost big money, and cause big job losses.
Clearly our beloved managers agree with this tripe. By posting it on the website for all the staff (especially the non-operational staff) to see, they have tacitly endorsed it.
No surprise really.