ALPL

Despite the occasional outcry about the “greedy” pilots on strike, all crew and many passengers do understand that negotiations with the employers can result in a deadlock which can at times lead to a strike. The current industrial disputes in numerous airlines across Europe have proven to be a pressure test for airline managers and their true colours.

Negotiating terms and conditions between pilot unions and airlines is always a challenge. It often creates a period with high tensions between the two parties that could drag on for months. Before starting such negotiations, it is clear that the large majority of pilots would like to build a life-long career with stable working conditions at the company they work for. Jumping from airline to airline is not what pilots want. We’re trained for a career for life and see the airline we work for – and fellow crew – as our family.

And this attitude is reflected in our approach to negotiations: we want the airline to have a long-term vision for a robust future, to be profitable and prosperous. But it is in this tense atmosphere of negotiations and pressure that you actually see the values and beliefs of your employer, the management’s true vision about labour relations.

Europe’s Single Aviation Market has been instrumental in creating new market opportunities, stimulating growth and boosting connectivity. Airlines and their employees have been the driving forces behind this success story, allowing the traveling public wider choice, better prices and quality service.

At the same time, the Single Market focused on economic freedoms and opportunities, while social aspects & regulations remained mainly national. This means they are subject to significant differences between the legal systems of EU Member States and subject to uneven control and enforcement.

These differences continue to exist with respect to working conditions, social rights, labor law, and social security systems. Companies in the aviation sector – including a number of airlines – take advantage of such differences, through various forms of ‘social engineering’.

The safe and efficient co-existence of manned and unmanned aircraft in the airspace is one of the major challenges in aviation for the next decades. The rapid growth in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), civil and military, has increased the demand for access to non-segregated airspace. It is recognised that the use of small UAS at lower altitudes is now a driving force of economic development. This revolution, based on a ‘disruptive’ technology, has already created new services in many fields of activity and new possibilities for airborne tasks that could not have been done before or were too costly to operate. 

At the same time, the safe integration of UAS into the current environment may include constraints to UAS operations and additional risks to manned aviation airspace users. The collective aim should be to minimise these operational constraints and to remove the safety risks as far as possible, while maintaining or improving the current levels of safety and security in the skies over Europe.

Imagine that Guinness, the Irish maker of the nutritious, smooth and dark nectar, wanted to sell some more of the beloved beer. Seeing an opportunity, it decides that Germany, with its tradition of clean, crisp Pilsner would benefit from a broadening of the taste buds. This could be an ideal market in which to offer an alternative to the usual German drink of choice, and indeed with superior Teutonic brewing knowhow, plentiful clean mountain water, reduced transport costs, and to meet the expected demand, the obvious thing to do is to open a factory in Germany.

So, it builds a factory in the South of the country, puts a big fence around it, and recruits some ace German brewers. And when they turn up for work, the gates close behind them, a green, white and gold Irish flag is run up the pole, and they are greeted by management: “Welcome to Ireland! Can I see your passports?”

A successful rescue mission in fierce weather that captivated the world on 23 March 2019. This is the story of the Viking Sky: a cruise ship with 1373 people on board which lost power off the coast of Norway. The strong winds and high waves made the rescue operation even more dramatic. A second ship in the vicinity running into trouble, added to the already highly challenging situation. 

The world watched with distress the images that emerged from the cruise ship and followed on (social) media the awe-inspiring hoisting operation as it unfolded throughout the afternoon and the entire night. By 10:30 am the next day 479 out of the 1373 passengers were successfully evacuated by helicopter. This makes it the largest passenger ship rescue operation to date. The question for the Viking Sky ship owners will undoubtedly be “What went wrong?”. But the rescue mission is one which deserve the exact opposite “What went right?” Here’s a first-person account from Capt. Jim Nielsen and the crew of Rescue 9 highlighting the importance of the impeccable organisation behind the mission, the competence, skills, the benefit of training and a well-rested crew.

If a pilot is looking for a job and goes online to check the vacancies, it comes as no surprise that broker agencies dominate the job market. In the past decade brokers – in all shapes and sizes – have filled a void created by airlines who were not able or willing to offer permanent or stable jobs. 

Instead, brokers started offering screening and recruitment, training programmes, Pay-to-Fly schemes and in some cases – actual job opportunities. But the rise of temporary work agencies has led to a fall in job quality and employee satisfaction. Until now, this was a sentiment shared by crew and only visible to industry insiders. Now, it is out in the open and confirmed by a recent EU Commission report on aircrew employment in Europe: if there is one common denominator in many of today’s employment and social abuses, it is temporary agencies, brokers & other intermediaries.

Regulators from across the globe are meeting today in Texas (USA), to discuss a possible return to service of the grounded Boeing 737 MAX. The FAA is currently reviewing Boeing’s proposed ‘software fix’ and is already looking ahead at taking the plane back to the sky.

For European pilots, having closely followed the developments and revelations in the past months, it is deeply disturbing that both the FAA and Boeing are considering a return to service, but failing to discuss the many challenging questions prompted by the MAX design philosophy. ln particular, how can a design and regulatory setup that originally failed by approving a flawed aeroplane’s entry into service, credibly provide the solution without significant reform? The European Aviation Safety Agency has a key role to play providing transparent, independent reassurance to pilots and Europe’s travellers.

Have you ever checked your watch halfway through a long day at work, wishing it was over, turned to your co-worker, and with a smile discovered they had nodded off at their desk?

Rather a lot of Europe’s pilots have too, though probably without the smile.

In February 2016, after over a decade of false starts and wrangling, pilots and cabin crew throughout Europe finally became subject to a single harmonised set of rules to limit the way in which flights can be scheduled and crewed. These Flight Time Limitations (FTL) are supposed to prevent aircrew fatigue that could endanger the safety of an aircraft, its passengers and crew.

Three years later, the lived experience of nearly every professional pilot in Europe would suggest that the rules certainly achieved half the stated aim – we are now harmonised, in that we all experience high levels of fatigue in routine scheduled operations…

A key part of that regulation was a requirement mandated by the European Parliament in the face of evidence that the original rules exceeded the recommendations of fatigue scientists in a number of areas. It required a scientific study to be undertaken, examining six areas where there was a concern about fatigue risks under the new regulation. That study was to report back within three years (i.e. now) and drive updates to the regulation in the light of operational experience.

A new revision of the EU regulation on pilots’ background checks introduces an “intelligence pillar” as of 31 Dec 2020. The new requirement to include and analyse intelligence information will become a mandatory element of the thorough background checks which pilots undergo every 5 year. Such checks are vital for aviation security and assess pilots’ trustworthiness. Currently, authorities look at education, employment and criminal records. But the revision of the Regulation adds intelligence background information as a mandatory requirement for a successful background check. 

This amendment* will have major consequences for pilots. In practice, if intelligence information about the pilot is missing, or is just inaccurate, he/she will fail the background check and will not be able to get a crew identification card. He/she will be deprived of the right to work as a pilot in Europe. The simple lack of information will be sufficient to fail his/her background check even if there is no proven risk to aviation security.

The industry is ripe for a new approach to recruiting & assessing pilots

The way we screen and recruit pilot cadets in Europe is an issue that lately has been raising eyebrows amongst industry experts. Today, the bulk of training schools screen their future clients – the cadets – themselves. The industry has turned a blind eye to this conflict of interest for years as it suited almost everyone. 

Regrettably, to many Approved Training Organisations (ATOs), a pilot candidate equals profit. Hence – to make a profit – the school needs a constant influx of cadets in training. Airlines, some of them happy to outsource their own training task, were also satisfied with a high volume of new trainee pilots. For a simple reason – an over-supply of pilots keeps new pilots cheap and labour costs down. The perception has changed when the results of this policy started to surface. Plenty of license holders who were initially able to secure the 100.000 € funding for the flight training with an ATO and to complete the training successfully were deemed ‘not fit for the job’ during the selection process at the airline company level.