Spanish aviation under the magnifying glass!!.. same worldwide?

[FAA fit / JAR unfit]

Yesterday, around 500 pilots from all aviation sectors in Spain got together in the new Madrid-Barajas airport terminal (T4) to manifest for lack of safety and other very important issues that are not taken seriously among airlines, flying schools, maintenance, etc.. and because spanish CAA (Ministerio de Fomento) are not doing anything to stop and avoid these getting-common practices..
Be careful with very low time instructors in exchange of experienced ones that flying schools are not willing to pay, low-cost maintenance around many aircrafts in all sectors, very low salary for pilots or even pilots that are paying for flying..
We must defend our carreer as our job is not easy or cheap, we sacrifice many things for our job, we take very big responsiblity and nowadays airlines pretend to give us peanuts for it.. I think that yesterday´s pilot´s manifestation in Madrid was a clear sign of what is going on and that something has to be done to stop this devastating attitude against aviation, against pilots and against many airline related jobs.. we should not collaborate with this kind of airlines, flying schools, etc.. we should not give them our time, our money, our knowledge.. so be very careful what you choose for your future..
Good luck and safe flying!!

[camlobe]

It had to start somewhere, and Spain is as good a place as any. The international aviation community needs to keep this ball rolling.
Where next?

[TE RANGI]

Well OK, but what exactly do you propose?

[Idunno]

How about IFALPA getting off their ars3 and organising a worldwide day of 'Awareness Raising' public assemblies like the Spanish one?

[Thunderball 2]

You're playing with fire, guys. Not a reason to do nothing, but once the press get hold of this all control will be lost. Anything could happen.

[faheel]

All will be lost ?
What the hell does that mean ?:rolleyes:

[FAA fit / JAR unfit]

The fire already started and it is getting worse..
What would you do when a B747 captain salary will be let´s say €2,000 and if you crash and survive you´ll go to jail? What would you say when your First Officer has 80 hours total flying because somehow your country accepted low time pilot licence´s done in a month or something like that..?

Playing with fire?

[Thunderball 2]

Faheel,

You write "All will be lost ? What the hell does that mean ?".

What the hell does it mean? I've no idea. Not a clue. You wrote it. I didn't.

I wrote "all CONTROL will be lost". And what I meant by that was that once the press are given something to publicize, you have no way of knowing what they will do with it or how it will be presented to the public. But one thing is 100% certain; the press will always misunderstand anything that comes their way, especially anything that involves aviation and safety.

[TE RANGI]

The bottom line is that passengers want low fares. Not even a high profile accident would deter them from flocking to the cheapest counter the day after. And in an ultra-capitalistic, globalized, dog-eats-dog environment cost cutting is the name of the game, and I don't see how we can stop that.

A cheap capt with a zero-experience copilot? Indeed, that's already happened.

[GBALU53]

I aggree on all that is being said.

Safety is paramount.

It is not only the Spanish that need to look into aviation practices but the Irish, after reports of Ryanair operating below limits at Stansted a few days ago in foggy conditions.

The last thing any one wants is an incident or accident

[Thunderball 2]

So where's the evidence that LCCs are less safe than legacy carriers?

[Idunno]

So where's the evidence that LCCs are less safe than legacy carriers?Who wrote that? YOU made that connection. YOU made that inference.
The lowering standard of pilot training and the 'dumbing down' of the career (while still loading all the legal responsibility on the crew) is universal, and is the core issue.
And if you can't see the danger in the trend - you're going to see the consequences.

[fractional]

There are different levels of safety across the world. There is also a lot of written stuff about it but all that has human being's factor and the environment he/she lives in professionally.
The level of safety in country A, despite the same training, procedures and reading material to refer to, isn't the same in country K and so on... The truth of the matter is in the "safety culture" of the local authority and consequently its effective authority to the operators registered with that authority. Unfortunately, greed is plenty among owners, share holders, managers have to show (good) black balances at the end of fiscal year and many aspects of safety related issues are just "shelved".
It's a difficult task. It's progressive professionalism that has the key for a safe operation and that ought to be taken by everyone in the aviation business.
THE WORLD AVIATION COWBOYS(GIRLS) MUST BE STOPPED AND ARCHIVED FOR GOOD.

[FAA fit / JAR unfit]

Safety must be a first issue.. keep this up!!

[fortuna76]

So what can be done, somebody asked? Well here is a few ideas just from the top of my hat:

1) Change the initial pilot's training program. Specially the theory. I was with a mate last week who is doing oxford and reading his study books I was amazed to find all the crap in there. Binary counting, chemical reactions.....get a life. Meanwhile there is no time whatsoever spend on the real issues like crm, human factors, etc. All those things that make up 80% of what really goes wrong in the cockpit.

2) Make type rating buying illegal by law. Yes, I know this is a though one and I am sure that if it would be in place those greedy beancounters will try to find a way around it, but it would be a good start and it is not impossible. It is clear by now that the pilots can not be expected to bring a stop to this any more, so lets try it by law. I have flown with young guys that payed up for all of it and ended up with a 200.000 euro dept and a 1275 euro a month salary. Eight of our co-pilots are bankrupt. So instead of doing their job they are worried if they can find food that night in the plane. That is not good for safety (and basically inhumane). I got guys here who eat every other day because they cannot afford to eat every day. Do not think I am going to far here, THIS IS REALITY OF LIFE FOR SOME GUYS, and we allow it to happen with this cost cutting stuff!

3) Change the work and rest regulations. They are supposed to be there to protect us but are written for big carrier operations and do not protect low cost pilots and commuter pilots. Pax still think that pilots are fit because they can only work so and so many hours, but for some reason this includes working 60 hour work weeks where most people in normal life do 40 or 36 hours per week. We are long term fatiged! I only found out how fatiged when I took six months away from the job. A whole new life opened up to me.

Just a couple of ideas guys, there are loads more. Madrid is a good start and it gives me a sense of possibilities for the future, because it is possible to stand united as pilots to fight the bad things in our industry. We are the only once willing and able. Management is happy as they are grabbing money. Maintenance have a bunch of good guys but at the end of the day they will also bend from pressure and shift the responsibility to us. Flight attandents have very often 6 months contracts (specially here in Spain) and can never make a stand. Pax just care about low fares, because they don't realize what that does to the safety of their flight. So it is just us guys. MAKE A STAND!

[Roadtrip]

Low pay? Low time instructors? PFT schemes? Lousy maintenance? Heck that's been going on for years in the US with the blessing of the gubment.

[ant1]

Spanish pilots union keeps pressure ... (http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles/2006/05/11/Navigation/177/206554/Spanish+pilots+union+keeps+pressure+on+government+over+'misl eading'+aviation+safety.html)

[Lucifer]

Another white, middle class protection racketeering union, doomed to failure.

Can't stop wages going down as it is too attractive a career so people pay to learn. Preventing market forces by regulating wages results in insiders keeping jobs and outsiders never being able to achieve their dream.

The safety argument is a misnomer - the fact is unions can't stand losing power and influence.

[10secondsurvey]

As a punter (SLF), I would not normally post in a pilot thread, but an important aspect of all this is the perspective of paying passengers. De Rangi suggested that passengers would keep going to the cheapest counter, even if there were a high profile accident. Some people might, but I think a lot would not. But should we wait until people are killed before making public the concerns that professional flight crews have over safety?

Because I read PPrune, I am aware that questions (whether true or not) are continually raised over safety at certain LCC's, and as I have nothing else to base my judgements on, I choose to never fly with certain airlines, no matter how cheap. That is my personal choice. The general public, however, assume that the highest safety standards are always applied even at LCC's, and they have precious little information to tell them otherwise.

If there are real safety problems within European avaiation, I and any other frequent flyers I know would absolutely definitely want flight crews to speak up.

The reason people use cheap airlines is they are guided by the "long documented" concept of "if they were unsafe, they wouldn't let them fly, would they". That is what most passengers know and firmly believe, and nobody is telling them otherwise.

[Airbus_a321]

safety should a big concern in each country. And the wave should continue from MAD whole over the world.

e.g. look at the "safety-culture" , if there is any in the "incredible India"
according DGCA-rules:

the total on type flight time experience of an active flight-crew must be by law, (to improve flight safety !! and so to do all the best for the passengers !!) 500 hours
just to make it clear. That means in real life: Copilot 450 hrs. Captain 50 hrs. Nobody is asking any questions about any other flight experience. That means the 450 hrs the F/O has on-type is in worst case his total flight time!

[MEL-king]

Its worries me that some of you Pilot types can't see what your Spanish Colleagues Can. As a Licensed Engineer i sometimes wonder if you all have your heads buried in the sand. Maintenance is something you dont see whilst you are sat at the sharp end. You get on the Aircraft and assume that the thing has to be working properly as there are no amber or red lights on when all things are running or that all the little yellow stickers mean someone who has years of training has decided that the aircraft can fly with an acceptable fault although he may have made that decision at five in the morning after dealing with maybe 4 or 5 other aircraft with defects that needed to be dealt with.
EASA and their new regulations with respect to Maintenance have raised a few eyebrows amongst the Engineer community with EASA stating that the new diluted regulations are written with a view to them being modified as circumstances dictate. In other words if the reg's have missed something which has been proven by an Incident (or accident) then and only then will they be rewritten. Little like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. This is due to the fact that the different National Aviation Authorities had different Regulations and the whole task of combining them to make one is a near impossible task, so it is easier to start again from scratch basically.

Most Engineers in the UK who operated under the ANO and the CAA now find that the rules they adhered to and were trained to have been removed or diluted to such an extent that we can see Big problems with respect to safety in the near future.
As i said earlier all Pilots like the Spanish need to wake up and smell the coffee your the ones that have to fly on them we just have to dispatch them with a clear conscience and walk away.

On a postive note you can be assured that the engineers representative body the ALAE are working on your behalf and are having an input into the rewriting of the EASA regulations by proving to EASA that some of the incidents have happened or will happen.

[fractional]

Again, the problem is that:
There are different levels of safety across the world. There is also a lot of written stuff about it but all that has human being's factor and the environment he/she lives in professionally.
The level of safety in country A, despite the same training (sometimes oversea's with different nationalities, and all learning the sam stuff) procedures and reading material to refer to, isn't the same in country K and so on... The truth of the matter is in the "safety culture" of the local authority and consequently its effective authority to the operators registered with that authority.
Progressive legislation and professionalism that has the key for a safe operation and that ought to be taken by everyone in the aviation business rather than sit and wait for an accident and then take corrective measures.
Will EASA become a European tool for politicians rather than an effective aviation one?

[ant1]

Safety issues do seldom translate into magazine cover histories. They more likely appear in the form of covered-up mishaps.

From time to time, (fortunately they are very rare events) comes the "big one" that makes its way to the front covers, but these have always existed and will allways exist.

Safety deterioraton is just a meaningless figure to the public: even if accident rates would double or triple to xx accidents/1.000.000 h flown, to the public it's just that: a figure, although safety may have indeed seriously deterorated (which, again and fortunately, does not mean that one in two aircraft that takes off won't make it).

[itwilldoatrip]

If you guy's are worried about safety perhaps you should read here on pprune http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=216663 and the engineers bulletin board here http://www.airmech.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=5674
EASA is trying to do away with the trained licenced engineer and replace him with an 'Appropriately Authorised Person'. Threads tell the reall story if they get away with it the guy signing out the aircraft could have been doing who's knows what before the company employing him gave him the authority.
Sit tight guy's and check your a/c well.
:}

[Plain Driver]

Airbus a321 wrote:

the total on type flight time experience of an active flight-crew must be by law, (to improve flight safety !! and so to do all the best for the passengers !!) 500 hours


Apparently, this comes from DGCA rules (Spanish CAA?).

Could someone provide a likewise JAR reference? I would like to show my boss what he's doing to the flying public.

Thanks, PD