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Airline pilots 'buckling under unacceptable pressures'?

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Airline pilots 'buckling under unacceptable pressures'?

Old 8th May 2015, 12:02
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Originally Posted by Lookleft
...... Airlines are not the only industry that are experiencing loss of staff morale and a declining job satisfaction rating however this is a forum for those in the industry.So this is the repository of airline industry complaints. As you say you are a non-pilot and occasional passenger so please tell us what is wonderful about your occupation and how we can access it.
The grass of another occupation often looks greener.

The problem with flying is that it has turned from a vocation where it was enjoyable into a job. Strangely, I think a lot of that has to do with the move to more automation. Someone who could fly manually and accurately for several hours then land using minimum aids and no automation in marginal weather had their skills tested. And that leads to a sense of satisfaction in the job - doing something that not many others can do. It also led to a level of respect from management as they could not do what their crews could do. The same for air traffic control minimal aids poor radar with no labelled displays or decision support tools.

However, now we have aircraft that are sold as easy to fly and easy to train crews on. No long training and on job training required, take a youngster who has paid for a couple of hundred hours training on a single piston, move them to a twin for another couple of hundred hours and you can have someone who can 'fly' (read operate the automatics) the aircraft as accurately if not more accurately than the skilled manual pilot. You do not earn respect from management for being a system operator. "Give us six months and we can have several more just like you..... "

So the job satisfaction is reducing as it is being 'deskilled' and made boring, the management feel that being the pilot is 'easy' and they are being held to ransom by claims for large salaries. Most of the management would not know what they were looking at in the cockpit but know their way around a company account sheet in their sleep - so have zero understanding of the crew's job and really don't see it as important for them to know.

And that is where we are now.

In the future it will get worse unless something is sorted out, I can imagine the arguments by the MBA managers now: "The company balance sheet will look immeasurably better if pilots are completely automated out. Have some reserve remote pilots on the ground somewhere cheap like Chennai who can take over if something goes iffy with the automation otherwise no crew required."
Any arguments, however valid from an operational point of view, will be discarded as whingeing Luddite pilots attempting to stop progress to protect their jobs. Remember, a director or CEO of an airline who has active pilot experience is a rarity these days. They literally do not understand flying and they believe all they are told by airframe marketing about aircraft flying themselves.
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Old 8th May 2015, 12:32
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Those who have started 30-35 years ago, and after several bankruptcies have ended up at the LOCO Airlines will probably agree with me that it is not like it used to be.


flying 4 legs a day with 25 min turnarounds in challenging weather with inexperienced cadets is taking a big toll on the body- and is a huge responsibillity too, on your shoulders all together...
Not even mentioning the endless commuting as you are not based where your family lives..


The Young chaps on the right hand seat have no clue about that as they think this is the norm, that is ,the way the LOCO's work.


What they fail to realize is that those who join as a cadet at lets say 20 years, will never retire at 65 in the same LOCO airline, as they wille either passed away before-who can survive 40.000 hrs on a airliner in 45 years with 25 minute turnarounds-!!
or ....have moved to greener pastures...


Yep you are right, if you want you are free to go, in fact I think about it daily, like many of the colleges I speak to but 'the escape' needs to be done with minimal impact on the family and allthough being rich has nothing to do with money-there must be some Financial follow up after the airline career.


But buckle up? No way. until the day I retire I will continu to absorp the stresses and pressures allthough I very well know that it is at my own health's expense.
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Old 8th May 2015, 13:38
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Working for an airline used to be a dream job, today is basically a modern form of slavery. Unfortunately the entire system, not only the airline industry, is designed to maximise profits at all costs, the well-being of human beings is ignored. Large Companies are managed by "bonus seekers" paid to maximise profit by brainwashing their workforce and convince all, including themselves, that a constant improvement is achievable, so constant reduction of costs is the main target.
Results is that modern workers are very often getting squeezed to the limit, modern employees are working longer hours then previous generations, jobs satisfaction is degrading and the vast majority of modern workers is over stretched, stressed and exhausted. Very common for workers, because expected, to check emails during holiday and late at night or week-end.
This is the result of massive corporative brainwashing: expecting workers not to take a lunch break or join a Union is now very common.
I am seriously worried about the mental health of this society and I am especially concerned about the future working life of my kids.
This trend must be stopped. How?
Yes, Karl Marx predicted this in the mid 1800s
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Old 8th May 2015, 14:06
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Some contributions are quite annoying. Monday morning quarterback with a beer can and popcorn in mouth and hands comes to my mind.
To them when buying a ticket only cut-throat price matters, but when boarding the plane they nearly wet their pants and pray to whatever that the pilots are well trained, well rested and mentally not shattered by bullying management. They however soothe their momentary guilt (should I have avoided that obnoxious managers’s loco?) with the lifeline that the regulator would have certainly intervened if this outfit were unsafe. Well, keep on praying! Regulators will always prefer to side with airline management and manufacturer, pilots can’t reward as handsomly and are chickenfeed of the industry. Today there are no regulators no more, their name is generally ‘Administration’ and that’s what they have become. No proactivity, no accountability, they are federal employees after all ……
The problem is here to stay because of all the protagonists (airline, regulator, employee, customer) there is only one interested to genuinly address the problem. Take a wild guess. The other three are all only interested in their own wallet.
Any accident, be it due to lack of training, rest or basic human respect for pilots, will generate a momentary outcry and some futile activity, mainly in written, but will be followed by shrugging shoulders and the eternal repetition that it would cost too much and generally flying is so safe, blah, blah.
Brace for some more Logan Air (fatigue), Asiana (training) and Germanwings (mental destruction of pilots) accidents. And brace for some more silly contributions from people having no exposure to the depth of the problem.
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Old 8th May 2015, 14:10
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From the Beeb article:
The physiological effects on one's body of compression and decompression
are what?
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Old 8th May 2015, 14:51
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Lookleft wrote:
"As you say you are a non-pilot and occasional passenger so please tell us what is wonderful about your occupation and how we can access it."

I'm retired! But my whole career history is too complicated to describe here and wouldn't illuminate much. However I can say that I've had to survive the loss of a business (courtesy of an idiotic bank) in 1988 that cost me 7 years of almost unrewarded toil and left me with about £100k of personal debt and innumerable other scars - at the age of about 40. I came very close to suicide, not helped by my intake of alcohol at the time.

I clawed my way out of this via a crappy job, starting as a part time employee doing poorly paid night work using computing skills acquired informally over the years, and ended up with a share option in the company which eventually bailed me out of the mire. Thereafter I ended up with the company taken over by a major media giant - a hellish environment and one that made me, like many others there, extremely ill. Trust me when I say that being responsible for production systems on a national newspaper is hideously stressful even if it doesn't entail responsibility for the lives of other people.

No one can say exactly where most serious illness comes from but as I lay in a hospital after the operation that (just) saved my life it was clear to me that no matter what, I had to get out of that environment. It had been obvious to me from the first day that it was the kind of place that might kill me but I rationalised the risk away. Three more operations and almost a year later I was back at work thinking "I'll give it another couple of years..." Then one day I just walked out. This has been quite costly but I'm alive, 11 years later. Had I stayed there I doubt that I would be. At some point one has to think carefully about what is really important. One consequence of serious illness is that this consideration is forced on us.

Meanwhile I note that no-one has so far (up to writing this) commented on the union aspect of this problem (for want of a better way of putting it.) I think that this is very revealing.
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Old 8th May 2015, 15:05
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We all undergo the routine of a "medical" every six months but it is really a farce which tests little more than one's ability to pee into a paper cup and to recognise the number 76 in coloured dots. The psychological/psychiatric element of the exam is trivial to the point of non-existence.

In almost 40 years of professional flying, most of it commercial, I have never been asked any probing questions about my state of mind in a civilian airmed exam. It's never much more than enquiring whether one is sleeping well or imbibing too much. I've never had a psychiatric problem and I'm sure most of us haven't either. The psych tests, such as they are, probably wouldn't pick up on a problem anyway.

The reason why I'm so exercised about this matter is because a young nephew of mine has just passed a Class 1 medical while doing his ATPL writtens. I know for certain that the kid has a very serious psychiatric condition which only surfaces in extremely rare situations. Such a situation is quite certain to arise in the normal course of events of a career on the flight deck of any airliner and I know that his reaction will probably be as extreme as was the German chap's, possibly with an even worse outcome. I've implored his sponsoring parent, who has seen at first hand the bubbling up of these rare eruptions on at least three occasions in the past decade, to stop paying for the kid to fly.

There simply does not exist any channel, such as CHIRP, through which to report [a priori] such a predictable outcome.
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Old 8th May 2015, 18:20
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chirp

Speaking as an engineer I know my colleagues have no faith in Chirp. Some of the managers there had previously worked for our employer and were not held in high esteem.
There is increasing pressure to reduce levels of manpower and skill levels. Those old enough to retire are doing so, quite often accepting the financial penalty for going earlier.
Like you guys what was a vocation is now a job and costs trump every other consideration.
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Old 8th May 2015, 18:29
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The regulators need to get out on the line. Talk to crews and understand what is happening in the industry, but regulation is a paper exercise today.

That is a direct comment from my days in 1980's. 30 years later the cry is still there. The XAA's have much to answer for.
Regarding FTL's, working days & rosters being driven by profits and productivity not human factors: I have always quoted, and never been supported nor contradicted, that FTL's have been driven by management & shareholders, and allowed to be by XAA's, so as to match the performance of modern a/c. B707 range 10hrs. Working day 8-10hrs. FTL's OK. B767 range 13hrs, FTL working day 13 hours + discretion: abused. B777 & A330 longer range = increased FTL's. Same humans flying the damned things. Unions achieved heavy crews and rest areas with local agreements. Non-unions airlines worked to max, no rest areas. XAA's washed their hands of the whole affair. The whole mess started after mass privatisation and shareholder control = capitalism is in charge and not standards and safety.
Go figure.

"Don't let your daughter on the stage Mrs Worthington", and sure as hell not in the flight deck.
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Old 8th May 2015, 19:45
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Originally Posted by framer
One thing that has made the job more stressful for me is the advent of digital notifications through the company issued iPad.
The company sends me several emails daily and some of them mean nothing, others are important operational information. If I go on leave and try to "switch off" from work by turning off the company email I feel a little anxious knowing that the day I go back to work I will have forty plus emails with operational information sprinkled throughout. The way to avoid that feeling is to periodically check them as my leave winds up but then that defeats the purpose of trying to " switch off" .
I'd be interested to know if others have felt this creep in over the last five years or so. I used to not think about work at all while on leave but now the changes seem to come so thick and fast it's a daily chore keeping up!
Agree entirely, that damn thing spits out e-mails like... And if you go on vacation for 3 weeks it will have go haywire with warnings that this and that has not been updated when you turn it on. At least the paper manuals were quiet...
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Old 8th May 2015, 20:26
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framer/oceancrosser,


For your own sanity, you must have the strength of character to switch it off. . . .


skridlov,

I think people don't really appreciate the stress caused to them, whether accidentally, or deliberately as a destabilising/control technique, by their employment/employer, and, even if/when they do, no-one supports them. It is all such a pathetic "stiff-upper-lip"/ old-school/ face saving farce , or as they oft quoted in the RAF "well, if you can't hack it" . Of course, at the end of the day, we all have to make a buck, so the pressure is always there to continue beyond the point at which it is reasonable to stop.


Cazalet33,

for your future conscience/peace of mind, you have to go beyond the unfortunate lads parents.

I think arranging a rendezvous (for yourself) with a psychologist from the relevant CAA is the minimum you can do, to at least have "done the best you could" in avoiding a future catastrophe , not to mention helping the rest of us who could end up sharing a flight deck with this chap. It will be very interesting indeed, in the current climate, to hear what response you get if you feel able to take this step.

Sad fact of life is that some people are a ticking time bomb, but, difficult to draw the line between "odd" & "dangerous" as no doubt the former partners of Andreas Lubitz are now reflecting on.
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Old 8th May 2015, 20:29
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I am not saying that making other choices would change things but how many of you voted for the DC and zero hours contracts make Britain competitive party yesterday?

The reality of modern business life is that it is largely run by soulless people who are too stupid in real terms to ever have held down a proper job. year back people developed specialised skills and knowledge-as they grew older they added management skills either from courses or day release or learning on the job.
today you can effectively start as a manager and as all business are reduced toa simple equation costs bad / revenues good they can all be run in the same way by the same people. All jobs are process oriented even when that's not really possible and every decision is reduced to a simple more revenue good more cost bad decision as there is no judgement or foresight or careful judgement in the process .

The problem is that as soon as a business gets some complexity added in this strategy does not work to well, judgement is required but there is no experience left so judgements will be bad.
is it a coincidence in the UK that while some things work quite well- Amazon deliveries for example everything that is complicated -Railways , NHS, Airlines too if you like run very badly mostly because they are too complicated to be reduced to simple spreadsheets .
The human tragedy is that the pressure put on the pivotal workers ina system , beat coppers, NHS nurses, airline pilots , school teachers etc grow and grow because these people have no where to hide . they are faced every day with making the judgements their managers used to but with the authority nd support removed from them-they cannot look upwards for help because there is none there, unlike previous generations the managers never did these jobs so they cannot share the burden and just push it back down on the shoulders of those at the sharp end.
And guess what its a double whammy for you guys because compared to those occupations you do or are thought to earn a lot of money and are therefore high cost AND if you screw up you do it in spades costing lives and millions of pounds. So you had better soon find a way of putting the pay to fly-roster to death genie back in the bottle or there will be many more of you burning out and not reaching your ever receding retirement age to survive on your ever reducing pension.
And to go back to my beginning the losers of the election may not be that much better than the winners but you can be sure there will be no Government sympathy for your cause for the next five years either but how many of you voted thatway
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Old 8th May 2015, 23:02
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This is worse than cancer

I genuinely believe that this form of degenerated capitalism is the worst cancer, a hidden disease which is costing billions; this illness is caused by rapidly deteriorating working conditions, it is however self inflicted, human beings acting as "bonus seekers"=Senior Managers have no "feelings" for other human beings, all done in the name of profit, targets and greed.
The only way to stop this suicidal trend is the re-introduction of Unions and strict legislation to protect workers' rights. Unfortunately we went from one extreme to another in the last few decades.
I used to be the strongest opponent of communism principles and the most loyal defender of the capitalism principles.
Unfortunately I am now convinced that Governments and Unions are the only potential effective "controllers" of a capitalistic system which is quickly degenerating in a new form of mass slavery in perfect McDonald's style. We will all be victim of this system, soon or later, and if it will not be us directly it will be our kids and our grand-children.
We therefore must stop this trend as soon as possible and the Internet can seriously help us.
I know that the Unions have been under serious attack for decades and many workers see them as their worst enemy (incredible), I am not sure how corporations managed to achieve this so successfully, but I am now convinced that without some sort of "working conditions" control large Companies will end up slaving the entire planet.
The solution will never come from within the large Corporations, they are merely profit making machines, Senior Managers are selected to reduce costs, increase profit and squeeze workforce as much as possible or relocate to cheaper countries. This means the solution can be found only outside corporations: Unions and Governments can help if we are united. Common sense has been lost for now.

Last edited by ILS27LEFT; 8th May 2015 at 23:10. Reason: correction
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Old 8th May 2015, 23:23
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Not Capitalist Or Communist

Not really about Capitalism or Communism
The problem that life in general has gone down the drain ever since the break-up of the West vs East and really ended when Y2K came.
Look, SR had the best paid pilots in the World earning CHF 200'000 just before it went bust and for so long it was the World's best capitalist airline.
Now, the problem is you get these wankers called consultants such as McKinsey who are get huge fees in how to give rotten advice all in the name of "Shareholder Value".
Indeed McKinsey sunk SR (cost CHF 20 bn) and IT (Air Inter) by saying that should merge with AF and the result is now AF is costing tax-payers billions to keep on life-support.
Remember the Chrysler and MB merger?
Another huge flop just as HP and Compaq thanks to those geniuses from McKinsey.
The problem is that Boards are staffed by jackals and vultures out to stuff their pockets whilst sinking their respective companies they're meant to fly.
So greed meets corruption in an heavenly match and were just mere cogs and pegs.
I have to say that deregulation was the biggest mistake ever and getting of flag-carriers total madness which gave way to McDonald-type contrats in the industry.
LCCs screw their pax and crews.
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Old 9th May 2015, 00:43
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skridlov thanks for your summary of your working life and no one can deny that you have been through the wringer. The issue with being a pilot is that the skills are not transferable and simply walking away is not going to make things easier. As you suggested you actually went from the frying pan into the fire. Most pilots get into this career for the joy and pleasure that flying brings but what we are on about, and this is a worldwide problem, is that the industry is changing at such a rapid pace that the rate of change and the changes being made are making the industry less attractive than what it once was.

I'm not sure what your comments about the involvement of the unions is all about. They have been trying to limit the impact of changes to things such as FTL but largely the unions have been legislated out of the system. In Australia when the unions tried to use innocuous industrial tactics such as making PA's and wearing red ties the executives of the airline shut the whole operation downImagine the outcry if a union tried the same thing. The unions under the banner of IFALPA are also trying to keep the regulators honest with their inherent technical expertise. Its very hard to have a fight with one arm tied behind your back.
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Old 9th May 2015, 00:53
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The only way to stop this suicidal trend is the re-introduction of Unions
I've espoused this for decades ever since Lord King of BA back in the 70s....even though trade unionism in the UK was overrun with commies and socialists with their own political agendas back then and needed a severe boot up the kyber.

As one old pilot in my youth once told me, employers will pull you out of your Hilton on an overnight and put you back upstairs in the hangar given the chance. You'll be worked to death and your pay gradually but continuously cut UNLESS YOU BELONG TO A STRONG UNION. Low cost carriers, an industry disease in my book, are at the forefront of indirectly reducing T&Cs of the real airlines as the corporate levels seek to match or come close to the 'low-cost' fare regimen.

However any Union must be moderate with no political agenda nor aligned to any Union umbrella (TUC / ACTU for example).
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Old 9th May 2015, 01:04
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On the other hand, I've been within 5 hours of 100 in 28 days almost constantly for at least the last 3-4 months and don't feel fatigued, 'under pressure' or 'burnt out'. Like everything in life, it is what you make of it.

Just my opinion of course.
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Old 9th May 2015, 01:21
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You're only 25. I only needed 5 hours sleep in between 12hr duties at your age, then party on after arriving back at base.

Wait till you're 40 or 50 then say how you feel.
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Old 9th May 2015, 02:37
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StevieW
On the other hand, I've been within 5 hours of 100 in 28 days almost constantly for at least the last 3-4 months and don't feel fatigued, 'under pressure' or 'burnt out'. Like everything in life, it is what you make of it.

Just my opinion of course.
That's only 5 hours a day, which can be easily done in less than an 8 hour duty time. If it involves regular start times or doesn't involve super early or late starts or finishes and no time zone changes will be easy to do those hours without feeling fatigued or being under pressure.

Until we see your duty times, start times, finish times etc, your comments mean very little.
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Old 9th May 2015, 04:24
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Quite right 27/09. Then again doing one or two long sectors amounting to 90+ hours in 28 doesn't seem as tiring as doing 4 short sectors associated with super earlies/lates (with a mix of both) on multiple consecutive days.
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