SAFETY – WHOOP WHOOP PULL UP
Congratulations Skypointer, you just had to mention Safety.
Hull losses/Significant Accidents:
SWISS: 2002 – Saab 2000
Crossair: 2000 – Saab340, 2001- AvroRJ100,
Swissair: 1998 – MD11, 1979 – DC8, 1970 – Convair, 1967 – Convair, 1963 - Caraville
I won’t bother going into the detail of the relative pax and crew body count.
Please try not to paint the Swissair experience as somehow perfect. Certainly no “professional” airline pilot I have met at Crossair/SWISS has denied that Crossair had problems. Has SWISS learnt anything from this period? Should the current SWISS CEO and EVP Flight Ops as well as other management promoted within SWISS from the former Crossair, have survived this long given their management and oversight of recruiting, selection, training, recurrent training, safety management etc. over this extremely sad period of Swiss and European Aviation History? Just what was the Swiss aviation regulator FOCA/BAZL doing during this time of rapid expansion? Please also remember that it was this same management that allowed over 850 pilots to enter Crossair 31 March 2002 without any selection or screening whatsoever. Oh, it just happens to be same management which gave you seniority and discriminated against its own ex-Crossair drivers. Methinks there might just be the whiff of hypocrisy and double standards at play.
Even post November 2001, safety management at SWISS, even with oversight from ex-Swissair colleagues in Flight Ops and Flight Safety, allowed a totally discredited, illegal and unsafe Screening Version I to develop which greatly set back a necessary Safety Culture within SWISS. This initial Screening process was so unprofessional, biased, ridden with conflict of interest, was against SWISS’s own stated Safety Management System, secretive, and illegal due to abuses of private confidentiality and information disclosure, that it had to be dropped for fear of criminal and legal action, let alone actually reducing safety.
Screening Version II started late 2002 is off to a better start with an openness, transparency, and pilot association input, however suffers again the accusation of a real conflict of interest. Management had the chance to install independent and neutral program leaders but did not do so. So yes, you are right there were and are problems and some of them still remain. Because you simply get the seniority and job security you want, is no justification to provide succour and support for a regime whose safety management record continues to have more than just growing pains or teething problems. But then, as we have established firmly on this topic, self-interest and self- preservation are prime motivational factors of which ex-Swissair drivers do not totally monopolise.
Thanks to Skypointer with some help from Stumpie we at least have your reasons for the current disputed seniority system that is not based on start date within Crossair (now called SWISS):
1. Safety – So its now confirmed and obviously self-apprarent that an Airbus and MD 11 driver is by definition safer than a Saab 2000 or an Avro RJ pilot.
2. One-sided and deserted negotiations – Complete with a management Diktat, my dear fellow, a party cannot negotiate if nothing is offered to negotiate upon. Maybe it might be useful if you re-did your Matura or went through your SLS notes. If you keep repeating the old canard so many times, you obviously think that people might start to believe your fabrication.
3. Investor requirement – try to find where it was written in the Business Plan and this demand has to date never been publicly stated by any government politician or business investor. But give it time, it will.
4. “Its no solution” – Congratulations on the excellent, thorough and detailed analysis and argument having considered all available models and options.
5. Cockpit Gradient Concerns – You have created a very interesting, new and unique world standard. The commander at SWISS shall always be older, wiser, have greater total time and on larger types, than the First Officer. Pity those other International Carriers flying in our same airspace with such dangerous non- conforming cockpits. The commander of an Airbus must be a graduate of the SLS, must be Swiss (minimum C Permit might be considered) and of course has the freedom of association to join only Aeropers.
In the face of such Swissair inspired superior logic, wisdom and argument the ex-Crossair pilots should bow down before you, seek your grace and forgiveness, and offer themselves first for Reduction/Layoffs/Sackings.
Skypointer and Stumpie have pointed out the influence of politics and money. Yes, it is simply a power game, with a fair amount of public emotion, which bears no reflection to running a safe, financially successful and law abiding international airline. Certainly don’t confuse politics and money, with economy or financial competence. By all means keep playing the blame game, and claiming victim status from the Swissair collapse. Yes we are all genuinely sorry for you and especially for your other colleagues early retired at the top and the juniors chopped at the bottom of the SENIORITY LIST. It is perfectly understandable, but never excusable, that you don’t wish to live and die again by the same SENIORITY system, but at least spare us from the sheer cant and hypocrisy.