We should not be campaigning to stop an increase in hours, but a reduction. The various AA's are in the hands of the financial bosses of the airlines. They wear 2 hats and wish to preserve the financial strength of the companies in a supposed safe enviroment. Too often have I seen the AA's relax the rules to an airline pleading for survival. Note the recommendation to the FAA after Valujet. It was strongly recommended that the FAA could not police saftey and commercial vialbility. Conflict of interests. (not sure what happened).
In early 90's the EU workers charter was brought in. This covered all the goodies from volume of working space, to rest breaks and average duty times. I'm sure we all have heard of these cossetted conditions. 45 cubic metres, temp controlled, regular breaks from work station, max 40hrs average etc. etc. Kinnock, the then transport commissioner, gave public transport a dispensation for a few years to come up will a cunning plan to implement something similar in its unique enviroment.
In the meantime the industries were supposed to implement a compensation package to its workers!
What happened? NOWT. The national flag carriers and their associated unions already had a cushy number. It was those at level 2 & 3 who kept the old working practices.
After a few years in mid 90's Kinnock lost his rag (gently) and insisted something be done and for the industries to stop dragging their feet.
What happened? NOWT. What did the unions do? NOWT. Kinnock's gone and where are we now? On the slope to even worse affairs. So 10 years after all ground workers received a better deal the aircrew at the sharp end of safety are being squeezed even more. Heath & Safety? Not once your airborne!
What do the public know about it? NOWT.
Remember the crash of B737 at Coventry. CAA sighted fatigue and yet the crew (Algerian) were well within CAP371. What if that freighter had instead been a pax B747 at Birmigham???
The CAA have said that CAP 371 is not a safe guard to fatigue and that they expect companies to devise a rostering scheme to give a balance between good productivity and quality time off at home for crews. Have the FOI's policed this philosophy? NO.
Have the unions policed this policy? In the flag carriers, yes! National unions should be just that. Safety and quality of life should be national, not company dependant.
In most ops manuals there is a statement in the safety section that "management should be aware the effect its decisions might have on morale and the effect of that on Flight Safety." Fine words, but following some threads on Prune about various airlines, that seems to have been totally ignored.
The drop in quality of life of an airline pilot, relative to the common work force, and even the ground staff within the same airline, brings me to the opinion that flying airliners is no longer fun and I would not recommend anyone to do the job, unless they can guarantee a major employer at the start of training. The quality of life expectation is too much of a lottery. If you want fun in flying, get a proper job with enough money and time off to fly small a/c for fun.
Regarding errosion of T's & C's and the decline of status/quality of work enviroment, call it what you will, and the union's roll in allowing it to happen, plus the historical greed of crews; remember the B747-100 all those years ago, nearly 40?
The bubble on top was for the crew rest area. The crews let them take it for a 1st class cocktail lounge (for more wide-body money) and management have branded us prostitutes ever since.
Now see where that has got us! It will be a long climb back up but in some EU contries the FTL's are downright dangerous to health, crews and pax, and as we've read in the ej thread, even in UK you can forget about a family or social life. Who there has time for hobbies?
It is far more than just NOT INCREASING HOURS it is more about ACHIEVING A NORMAL HEALTHY LIFE. To do that I believe there needs to be a whole revamp of the way we work.
Management have pressurised the AA's to extend FTL's to match a/c performance. God help us when the A380, or 340-600 starts flying charters.
Remember the public reaction when the long distance coaches to Athens started falling off the roads? Horror.
Remember what happened whan MP's were caught up in the ATC delays to BRU? S**T hit the fan and ATC delays became a priority. God forbid that a pilot fatigue crash with some MP's should happen, but it would target their thinking.
Public opinion did wonders for the doctors. A fatigued surgeon might kill 1 person, a fatigued pilot.............
It is ackowledged that the human is the weakest link in the accident chain. It seems that the outsiders expect technology to solve the problem by replacing many human actions, but they've lost the plot in understanding that at the same time, in many ways, they've weaked further the weakest link. See the latest stat's for 2002, an increase.
Pilot error is often the easy excuse. It is often heavily contributed to by managment and rostering error. Little investigation is done into why some qualified and competant pilots acted in such a strange way. CFIT is a classic case.
Long duty times on a single day is not too bad, but repeated daily, and with changing sleep patterns??? Why should the general work force have had such an imrovement in their quality of life and the crews have gone downhill so much?
Back to point 1. it is about reversing matters not stopping them getting worse.
Rant over and sorry for the spelling.
And yes, it did get so bad I quit.