Why does a pilot's job require more privacy than e.g. a flight attendant? There are lots of professionals (both on the low and high end of the pay scale) who have no privacy in their workplace at all - and not by accident, but by the nature of their jobs. In a similar fashion, a job requirement for pilots would be to be observed by a camera at all times while on the job.
Or is the workplace privacy guaranteed in the contract? In this case, the new policy would have to apply to new entrants first and old contracts would have to be negotiated.
Originally Posted by ZOOKER
Surely, the best way to "solve plane crashes" is to prevent them happening in the first place.
Sure, but the pilot community hasn't managed to do that, despite trying for over 100 years. Otherwise, we wouldn't have this discussion now. There isn't even a 100% understanding of what caused some past crashes. So some technical means to help understand past crashes and learn from them seems justified. Every cashier's office with a just few thousand bucks at stake is equipped with a camera recorder today, but a pilot's office with several hundred lives at stake isn't???
Wasn't the same (loss of privacy, no help against crashes) said about the CVR 40 years ago? And where would we be today without experience gained from past crashes using CVR? And how many CVR recordings (not actual crashes, but "pilots picking their noses") did leak to YouTube? There are some juicy recordings made from inadvertent radio transmissions or a stuck mic, but I think there are none extracted from the CVR. So this equipment offers some pretty good privacy.
In my opinion as a cowardly paying pax, pilots willing to sacrifice safety for a little bit of their own privacy simply don't belong in the cockpit.