FLUG REVUE July 2003: Safety culture necessary

PILOTS NEED TO FIGHT FOR SAFETY

By Volker K. Thomalla

Flight safety is an essential ingredient of airline success. It must be a top priority in the culture of an airline, since any impairment of safety could endanger human lives. Nevertheless, occasionally one comes across black sheep in the industry who do not take safety quite so seriously. If they get caught, they have to pay. The fines which, for example, the US Federal Aviation Authority imposes on sinners caught in the act are high, as they are intended to deter imitation.

Flight safety has many angles: as well as the technical side, in which the reliability of individual systems and their maintenance play a role, there is also a human side. Given that technology is becoming more and more reliable, the human factor is gaining steadily in significance. “Human error” is cited more and more often in accident investigations as the cause of an accident and in fact it has become the most common single cause of accidents.

The European aviation authorities have responded to this, and the subject of “human performance” now features in pilot basic training under the reformed pilot licensing regime. But training is only one aspect, even if it is an important one. What happens when a motivated and safety conscious pilot discovers shortcomings in the matter of safety at “his” airline and has no one to turn to? Thomas von Sturm, president of the pilots' union, Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), sees a close connection between the existence of employee representation at an airline and its internal safety culture.

The line of reasoning put forward by the VC is quite convincing. Employees of an airline must be able to talk about defects without fearing reprisals, they argue. For example, pilots must not be put under pressure to depart from the agreed flying duty and rest periods and to spend longer in the cockpit than is allowed. If a co-pilot exceeds his duty time solely out of the fear that if passengers have to spend a night in a hotel he will never get promoted to captain at this airline, then there is something very wrong. Such behaviour may frequently pass without incident, but if an accident occurs and the regulations on pilot duty hours were breached, then the first person to be blamed will be the pilot.

Here employee representation can help keep the right priorities foremost at the airline and protect employees from reprisals. In this connection, implementation of the seniority principle in cockpit promotions – as is customary in most, but not all airlines – is a force that promotes the safety culture in an airline. Practising flight safety protects all those involved: company, customers and workforce. It creates safety reserves which in critical situations constitute a buffer that prevents accidents. Foregoing this buffer voluntarily simply because employee representation is not tolerated in the airline is an attitude that betrays a lack of entrepreneurial farsightedness. Of course, employee representation can be uncomfortable for the airline management and flight safety as a culture costs money. But the lack of it can cost human lives and endanger the existence of the entire company.

From FLUG REVUE 7/2003

Last updated 11 June 2003

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