Airlines To Routinely Monitor Cockpit Voice Recordings?
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How many total flight-hours are there by US carriers each day? How many people would you need to employ to monitor all of that? If you're only going to sample the recordings then chances are that most will be happily erased and never listened to, although it does make it easier to single out a particular pilot and monitor tapes from all flights performed by that pilot.
It's a bit like the security services wanting to monitor every single email sent, just not practical to actually do it but it makes it easier for them to monitor particular individuals.
However, no system is ever going to be perfect - if an electronic record has been made, whether it be CVR, picture or email, it is trivial to leak, and once leaked, is unstoppable (unless it's so tedious that people can't be bothered to forward it).
It's a bit like the security services wanting to monitor every single email sent, just not practical to actually do it but it makes it easier for them to monitor particular individuals.
However, no system is ever going to be perfect - if an electronic record has been made, whether it be CVR, picture or email, it is trivial to leak, and once leaked, is unstoppable (unless it's so tedious that people can't be bothered to forward it).
SD Flyer, you live in a dream world if you think this quantity of data could be rigorously controlled. It cant, and that is exactly why this will never be allowed to occur.
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I'm in favor of government CVR audits to catch tax cheats discussing their offshore investments during those endless long haul excursions, but for no other purpose. Maybe weeding out the Limbaugh listeners too, but then the age 65 rule should take care of the majority of those.
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As I said before, most revealing of where some pilots' priorities lie. I don't have to live with your management, I do understand that.
Lest it not be self-evident, noone that I've read has proposed that ALL recordings should be actively monitored by someone ALL of the time. That is a straw man, and of course wouldn't be necessary to curb unprofessional behavior by the (likely very small) proportion of pilots involved. A relatively small sample will do nicely IMO as a strong disincentive - unless a pilot has little interest in continued employment in the industry of course.
*flame suit check - ON*
Lest it not be self-evident, noone that I've read has proposed that ALL recordings should be actively monitored by someone ALL of the time. That is a straw man, and of course wouldn't be necessary to curb unprofessional behavior by the (likely very small) proportion of pilots involved. A relatively small sample will do nicely IMO as a strong disincentive - unless a pilot has little interest in continued employment in the industry of course.
*flame suit check - ON*
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There is a grating disdainful tone to every post by SDFlyer. Why that is one can only guess, but as it so eloquently is pointed out at the bottom of the page, not all motives are what they purport to be.
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I take it you think my motives are not of the purest. Not much that I can do to convince you otherwise, is there? Perhaps if you read more carefully what it is that I've been writing .....
Never mind, I shall leave the field to those who seem to be in complete agreement that everything in the garden is rosy.
Good day gentlemen, and I'll try not to scare you too much up there, like I may have done that poor chap in the Lear recently on the climbout from F70. I was approaching the field from the other side, just like I said I was .... Man but those suckers can climb, never actually saw him quit the area *sigh*
Fly safe.
Never mind, I shall leave the field to those who seem to be in complete agreement that everything in the garden is rosy.
Good day gentlemen, and I'll try not to scare you too much up there, like I may have done that poor chap in the Lear recently on the climbout from F70. I was approaching the field from the other side, just like I said I was ....
Man but those suckers can climb, never actually saw him quit the area *sigh*Fly safe.
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Many investment houses tape (by law, house policy, or both) all telephone conversations on their dealing desks. Every employee who picks up those phones (or interphones) knows every word is taped and subject to review.
Observations:
1) This didn't save certain dealing houses from making bad trades which resulted in economic calamity (finance equivalent of crew-induced air crashes).
2) The taped employees know there are far too many hours of tapes for management to possibly review every hour and word. Thus, the odds of any personal conversations being exploited against the participants for non-safety-related reasons = low/approaching zero.
3) No labour law or union contract forbids this practise, based on disclosure and consent.
Yet there are benefits:
It deters certain behaviours and statements from being made during business hours, on company time. And ensures a record is available in the event of any "incident."
There's no inherent reason CVR taping and review should impair flight safety - on the contrary, it might deter off-topic behaviours and help with early detection of problematic tendencies. Panacea? No. Public interest in detecting violative/dangerous tendencies? Clearly. Cultural resistance to such practise? Understandable.
Observations:
1) This didn't save certain dealing houses from making bad trades which resulted in economic calamity (finance equivalent of crew-induced air crashes).
2) The taped employees know there are far too many hours of tapes for management to possibly review every hour and word. Thus, the odds of any personal conversations being exploited against the participants for non-safety-related reasons = low/approaching zero.
3) No labour law or union contract forbids this practise, based on disclosure and consent.
Yet there are benefits:
It deters certain behaviours and statements from being made during business hours, on company time. And ensures a record is available in the event of any "incident."
There's no inherent reason CVR taping and review should impair flight safety - on the contrary, it might deter off-topic behaviours and help with early detection of problematic tendencies. Panacea? No. Public interest in detecting violative/dangerous tendencies? Clearly. Cultural resistance to such practise? Understandable.
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The difference with the investment house case is that if you pu the phone down, you can talk to the person next to you without it all being recorded. In an aircraft cockpit you're always being monitored. Of course, the 'too much information' point is valid, although as I said above, if the management is targetting a particular pilot it's easy enough to grab the relevant recordings.
Exactly Llondell. No one, anywhere, has every word said at work recorded. Except those idiots on Big Brother, and you could hardly call that work! But it is a great example of how that sort of recording can be used/misused. 
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Zip it and stop whining, the lot of you. If you don't break the regulations, and don't engage in ignorant inflight bigotry, you have nothing to fear.
Or perhaps some of you are scared of admitting that extra-marital affair whilst on the flight deck?
Or perhaps some of you are scared of admitting that extra-marital affair whilst on the flight deck?
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Having seen before the "witch hunt" that can happen when an airline wishes to get rid of a pilot, I would absolutely NOT support the introduction of regular reviews of the CVR.
And for all those (who obviously don't fly airliners) who think that it is perfectly reasonable for all pilots to only speak SOPs whilst at work, can I say - have you ever tried doing that for 14 hours? Can you imagine the stress if you know your manager wants rid of you, or the company needs to make redundancies? They could just listen into the CVRs, find a couple of non-SOP moments or comments you make that aren't politically correct and sack you. We don't get breaks, we are "working" for the whole time. You non-airline pilots, would you like to have everything, from the moment you set foot on your company's premises, including everything you say in conversation, by email, by phone, or personally, and in both work time and your own time, for 14 hours straight, recorded and played back by management? Are you perfect 100% of the time? If you are not, then you should not be supporting the idea of having everything you say recorded whilst at work.
I completely agree that SOPs should be followed, and the sterile cockpit is a great idea. As someone else said, the odd sentence here and there usually enhances flight safety because it tells the other pilot that that person is alert and listening. And on a long tiring duty it helps keep you alert. Personally I have found the missed radio calls (that another poster mentioned) tends to be when I have done a very long duty and I am tired and the cockpit is quiet and therefore my alertness is at a low ebb - your brain switches off and it takes longer to realise ATC are calling you.
There is another way for airlines to monitor SOP adherence. The airline I work for has recently had a kind of audit of SOPs. A number of pilots (non-management!) were allocated to come on the jump seat of different flights. The information they recorded was completely anonymous, there were no details of crew or anything like that. They noted down which SOPs were not adhered to, or were called incorrectly, and this information was gathered together to find out which SOPs were working and which were not. The idea being that if most people in the company weren't using the SOP or finding it hard to adhere to, perhaps the SOP should be changed.
This is far better than routine recording/ playing of CVR tapes. It is pro-active. Because the "monitor" is "one of us" there is no extra pressure like there is in the sim. And it is known that there is absolutely no punitive measures, so the crew operate as "normal".
And for all those (who obviously don't fly airliners) who think that it is perfectly reasonable for all pilots to only speak SOPs whilst at work, can I say - have you ever tried doing that for 14 hours? Can you imagine the stress if you know your manager wants rid of you, or the company needs to make redundancies? They could just listen into the CVRs, find a couple of non-SOP moments or comments you make that aren't politically correct and sack you. We don't get breaks, we are "working" for the whole time. You non-airline pilots, would you like to have everything, from the moment you set foot on your company's premises, including everything you say in conversation, by email, by phone, or personally, and in both work time and your own time, for 14 hours straight, recorded and played back by management? Are you perfect 100% of the time? If you are not, then you should not be supporting the idea of having everything you say recorded whilst at work.
I completely agree that SOPs should be followed, and the sterile cockpit is a great idea. As someone else said, the odd sentence here and there usually enhances flight safety because it tells the other pilot that that person is alert and listening. And on a long tiring duty it helps keep you alert. Personally I have found the missed radio calls (that another poster mentioned) tends to be when I have done a very long duty and I am tired and the cockpit is quiet and therefore my alertness is at a low ebb - your brain switches off and it takes longer to realise ATC are calling you.
There is another way for airlines to monitor SOP adherence. The airline I work for has recently had a kind of audit of SOPs. A number of pilots (non-management!) were allocated to come on the jump seat of different flights. The information they recorded was completely anonymous, there were no details of crew or anything like that. They noted down which SOPs were not adhered to, or were called incorrectly, and this information was gathered together to find out which SOPs were working and which were not. The idea being that if most people in the company weren't using the SOP or finding it hard to adhere to, perhaps the SOP should be changed.
This is far better than routine recording/ playing of CVR tapes. It is pro-active. Because the "monitor" is "one of us" there is no extra pressure like there is in the sim. And it is known that there is absolutely no punitive measures, so the crew operate as "normal".
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AB girl
Its called a LOSA - Line Operations Safety Audit - they are being quite well received over here in UK and agree that this is a better way to do things for the very reasons to which you allude - inappropriate management interference - it does happen and CVR monitoring would be more easily abused.
http://www.icao.int/ANB/humanfactors...alltext.en.pdf
Its called a LOSA - Line Operations Safety Audit - they are being quite well received over here in UK and agree that this is a better way to do things for the very reasons to which you allude - inappropriate management interference - it does happen and CVR monitoring would be more easily abused.
http://www.icao.int/ANB/humanfactors...alltext.en.pdf
ABGirl, my thoughts indeed. Most people tend to think you enter the aircraft, get busy, fire up, taxi, fly approach, taxi and shutdown all in one go.
It simply is not that efficient.
Why shouldn't I be talking private issues while we are sitting out a 2 hour delay, or while we are in cruise? Of course, there are times you should keep all conversations purely professional, but since we don't have smokingrooms, canteens, bars etc on board our aircraft there is only a limited amount of areas where you can engage in social dialog. Certainly if you're only 2 on the flightdeck.
And why the paranoia against abuse by management? Because often they have proven to be ruthless beyond anyones imagination if they had someone on their hitlist.
It simply is not that efficient.
Why shouldn't I be talking private issues while we are sitting out a 2 hour delay, or while we are in cruise? Of course, there are times you should keep all conversations purely professional, but since we don't have smokingrooms, canteens, bars etc on board our aircraft there is only a limited amount of areas where you can engage in social dialog. Certainly if you're only 2 on the flightdeck.
And why the paranoia against abuse by management? Because often they have proven to be ruthless beyond anyones imagination if they had someone on their hitlist.
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Food for thought ! The walls do have ears !
You get on board your flight with your F/O, 45 minutes prior to pusback, the amount of ensuing chatter, work-gossip, expletives (trying to find a dropped pen, books and charts), general day to day cockpit preflight dramas all being recorded from all and sundry coming into the flight deck, then follows the briefing , short-long, standard, non-standard or otherwise, then 3 minutes into the taxy, you ‘dent’ their aircraft, by having some set of stairs being incorrectly parked, that you couldn’t see, hit the wing tip…… its an incident! As with all companies, an incident usually means pulling of CVR and more than likely DFDR/QAR tapes = FOQA… this whole period was just under an hour or so of cockpit activity, yet digital CVR recorded the last 2 hours, now the company will have the benefit of listening to the previous in-bound crew’s chatter during Final Approach and taxying in, let alone the current crew’s own situation!
Likewise, you’ve landed, taxied in, good ship all went well, walk off to crew room to sign off, get into car and a buddy calls you, that the aircraft was involved in a bingle or drama of some sort!!!! Company will pull CVR, and have a good insight into your last half hour of cruise flying and half hour of descent and approach!!!
Even worse scenario, you land walk away from a good flight, guy at bottom of stairs with tool box, says he’s here to shut down aircraft and pull CVR for “flight Operations purposes”… they now have 2 hours of all of your chatter, thoughts about various folk in the office and the way they do things to pilots etc…
Is the CVR used as a proper safety tool or as we’ve been seeing over the years, a weapon ?
If no incident, prior to each push back and after each landing, set park Brake, push the CVR button! You’ll feel a bit better next time the guy comes up the stairs with his tool box!
You get on board your flight with your F/O, 45 minutes prior to pusback, the amount of ensuing chatter, work-gossip, expletives (trying to find a dropped pen, books and charts), general day to day cockpit preflight dramas all being recorded from all and sundry coming into the flight deck, then follows the briefing , short-long, standard, non-standard or otherwise, then 3 minutes into the taxy, you ‘dent’ their aircraft, by having some set of stairs being incorrectly parked, that you couldn’t see, hit the wing tip…… its an incident! As with all companies, an incident usually means pulling of CVR and more than likely DFDR/QAR tapes = FOQA… this whole period was just under an hour or so of cockpit activity, yet digital CVR recorded the last 2 hours, now the company will have the benefit of listening to the previous in-bound crew’s chatter during Final Approach and taxying in, let alone the current crew’s own situation!
Likewise, you’ve landed, taxied in, good ship all went well, walk off to crew room to sign off, get into car and a buddy calls you, that the aircraft was involved in a bingle or drama of some sort!!!! Company will pull CVR, and have a good insight into your last half hour of cruise flying and half hour of descent and approach!!!
Even worse scenario, you land walk away from a good flight, guy at bottom of stairs with tool box, says he’s here to shut down aircraft and pull CVR for “flight Operations purposes”… they now have 2 hours of all of your chatter, thoughts about various folk in the office and the way they do things to pilots etc…
Is the CVR used as a proper safety tool or as we’ve been seeing over the years, a weapon ?
If no incident, prior to each push back and after each landing, set park Brake, push the CVR button! You’ll feel a bit better next time the guy comes up the stairs with his tool box!
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CVR monitoring
You're on company-time, flying company-owned equipment. The CVR belongs to the company. If they want to monitor it, have at it. No different than company-monitoring of any piece of equipment they are providing you (i.e., laptop, cell-phone, etc...).
Simple as that.
Simple as that.
Last edited by OD100; 16th Jun 2009 at 02:26. Reason: typo
, after all, they can't fire you then, can they?