The Air Line Pilots Association International (ALPA) held its 53rd Annual Air Safety & Security Forum on Aug. 8-9 with the theme of “Our View,” promoting the airline pilots perspective on challenging issues facing the airline industry today, such as pilot training, airport access, and secondary security barriers.
Remarks from ALPA Executive Air Safety Chairman Capt. Terry McVenes (US Airways), ALPA National Security Committee Chairman Capt. Bob Hesselbein (Northwest), ALPA President, Capt. John Prater, and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Vice Chairman Robert Sumwalt set the tone for the event, held in Washington, D.C.
McVenes welcomed more than 500 attendees saying “today’s airline pilots face many demanding issues. But the two matters we deal with every day, on each and every flight we operate, are safety and security: ensuring our passengers and cargo get safely and securely to their destination.”
Hesselbein noted that, “In a little over 100 years, the novelty of air travel has transformed itself into a necessary portion of the global transportation and economic system. With the evolution of this technology, however, has come the evolution of security risks.”
The NSC chairman spoke of two landmark hijackings, pointing out that these events demonstrate “why we gather at the ALPA Air Safety and Security Week: not simply to address and solve the safety and security challenges we understand, but to discover weaknesses and provide smart, cost-effective solutions that mitigate the dangers.
“We must ask if our efforts are effective, or merely designed to comfort the public in a cosmetic show of defense. Do our protective processes actually work, or are these security activities merely being utilized today because they were utilized yesterday? The costs of security require that these questions be asked and answered,” he added.
ALPA President Prater discussed current pilot hiring trends, noting that, as in the past, training standards are being challenged in the interest of addressing demand, and this phenomenon is raising safety concerns. “We face the same challenge,” he said, “but under very different industry conditions. Together, we will find a solution, just like those ALPA representatives who came before us.”
Prater talked about hijackings and the evolution of the Federal Flight Deck Officer Program as well as the importance of the union inserting itself in the “Green” debate.
NTSB Vice Chair Sumwalt, a former US Airways captain, stressed the importance of adhering to standard operating procedures. “Disregarding SOPs is like putting holes in the safety net,” he said.
He talked about FAA Line Operation Safety Audit findings, which indicated that a crew who doesn’t follow SOPS is three times as likely to make mistakes. When working with fellow pilots in the cockpit, Sumwalt said, “Don’t accept anything less than a high standard.”
Attendees heard from the chairmen of the five ALPA-wide technical groups and other leaders of ALPA’s air safety structure.
The acting chairman of ALPA’s Operations Committee, Capt. Victor Cabot (American Eagle), noted that the pilot’s union is dealing with several ‘hot-button’ issues, including pilot fatigue, Cabot declared that, in the United States, “truck drivers have better rest requirements than airline pilots”
“San Francisco International Airport is the ”poster child for dealing with wake turbulence,” Cabot asserted. “We believe that if we can make SOIA [simultaneous offset instrument approaches] work there [to resolve wake issues], we can make it work anywhere.”
F/O Mark Rogers (United), director of Dangerous Goods Programs, announced that at least 13 incidents involving lithium batteries carried aboard airliners have occurred in the last 12 months. Six of those incidents were inflight fires resulting in four diversions.
In March, Rogers said, ALPA asked the U.S. DOT to conduct a risk analysis of lithium batteries. DOT will contract with an independent laboratory to conduct the risk analysis. DoT wants ALPA’s input.
Concerned over the potential for fire in the cargo hold, DOT has elected to maintain a ban on cargo shipment of non-rechargeable lithium batteries on passenger transports. The prohibition does not apply to batteries taken aboard planes and used in cameras, computers or other battery-powered devices.
As a safety precaution, the DOT advises travelers to pack spare batteries in their carry-on luggage, rather than putting them in checked luggage, so any fire can be quickly extinguished.
Lithium batteries can overheat and ignite in certain conditions. Safety testing conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration found that current aircraft cargo fire suppression systems are not capable of suppressing a fire if a shipment of primary lithium batteries is ignited in flight
DoT is working with the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the battery and airline industries, airline employee organizations, testing laboratories, and the emergency response communities to increase public awareness about battery-related risks and developments, and to promote improvements in industry standards
The chairman of the ALPA Airport and Ground Environment Group, Capt. Bob Perkins (Air Canada Jazz), said about 40 percent of U.S. airports have less than the required Runway Safety Areas (RSA). By Dec. 31, 2015, U.S. airports will have to have an RSA at least 1,000 feet long on each runway end–or achieve an equivalent level of safety by using “declared distance” (effectively shortening the runway available) or installing EMAS (“crushable concrete”) in the overrun.
Kim Cardosi, a human factors researcher with the DOT’s Volpe Center, discussed her research on runway incursions, which showed that “the real risk to airlines wasn’t landovers, but airplanes crossing in front of other airplanes taking off.” She added that the most common pilot error that results in a runway incursion is reading back a “hold short” clearance correctly, but then crossing the hold-short line (but not the runway edge). Based on ASRS reports, the most common factor in these events, she said, is one pilot head- down, programming the FMS or running checklists. For a report on the recent NTSB Runway Safety Forum see ASW’s sister publication Regional Aviation News http://www.aviationtoday.com/ran/categories/commercial/10049.html
Cardosi urged pilots to use their landing lights as a signal when taking off or crossing a runway, as described in FAA Advisory Circular 120-74A–i.e., turn off all lights except for the landing lights when taking the runway, and turn on the landing lights as a signal when starting takeoff roll or crossing a runway.
Much was made at the pilots meeting of the September midair between a Gol Airlines Boeing 737 and an executive jet over the Amazon, killing 154 people.
McVenes condemned the recent indictment handed down against the crewmembers involved in the mid-air collision over Brazil.
“The goal of accident investigation is to learn all we can about how to prevent a similar tragedy from ever happening again. The legacy of this accident must be to make an already extraordinarily safe air transportation system even safer. Criminalizing those involved does nothing to achieve that goal.
“ALPA’s International Safety Committee has placed a high priority on developing regulatory and investigative policies that will prevent the criminalization of aircraft incidents and accidents throughout the world. While ALPA has been successful in many places, some factions unfortunately remain intent on fixing blame rather than improving safety. “The threat of criminal prosecution thwarts information gathering and data sharing, which form the foundation of accident investigation. Exposing professional airmen to prosecution for alleged mistakes is misguided and incompatible with preventing future accidents,” McVenes stated.
Bill Voss, president and chief executive of the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) and previously director of the Air Navigation Bureau at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), said the FSF “has a lot to say about criminalization, which we believe has a crippling effect on aviation safety worldwide, not just in Brazil.”
Voss said air traffic controllers join the FSF in expressing outrage. “If you think we’re excited, you should talk to the controllers. They survive the accidents and go to court a lot. This issue cuts across the industry very deeply and something must be done about it,” the air safety expert believes. “I have been at the ‘pointy end’ where politics and safety rub against each other continuously. I will tell you that every time that politics intrudes on safety, tragedy follows. It just utterly predictable,” Voss stated.
McVenes used the event to again criticize the NTSB over its recently concluded Comair 5191 crash investigation. He said the proceedings fell short in taking a “system-wide” approach needed to create a safer aviation industry. McVenes said the NTSB continues to wrongly rely on a single “probable cause” approach to accident investigation.
“The Nation needs to move towards a system that puts equal identification on all factors. By doing so, we will be able to move away from simply determining cause in favor of accident prevention activities,” said McVenes. “Probable cause statements are good for the media, but do nothing to enhancing or improving safety,” he added.
“Over the last decade, we’ve made a lot of tremendous safety improvements. We have a lot to celebrate. Accident rates have gone down dramatically all around the world, said Voss.
But there is still a lot of work to do as regards air safety, and there is a proud legacy that we can leave. We follow in some big footsteps, but those that follow will need to leave some very big footprints of their own.”