US Passengers at Risk by FAA Fatigue Rule

 Passengers on domestic US airlines are now at an increased risk of being  crashed into by sleepy cargo pilots. Lawyers at the FAA used case law, negligence reasoning and other historically based legal records to reach a regulatory milestone, aligning with lawyers at   large US based package express and airborne freight haulers. The FAA pointed out that so far, when cargo pilots have had fatal crashes, they have only killed themselves. But is the regulation a millstone around the necks of cargo pilots? Industry safety experts say the risk to the passenger flying public is very real. Fatigue caused human errors can lead to massive passenger casualties. Take for instance one of the worst commercial aviation passenger disasters in history. 583 people were killed when two heavily laden B747s collided in Tenerife in 1977.   It is believed that some of the crew members who may have been on duty in excess of 15 hours, in my opinion, misunderstood ATC communications. The KLM captain was very near the end of his official duty day, but believed that if he could get airborne before the end of his duty day, that he could complete the flight to Amsterdam with his load of passengers. A good man, a man dedicated to his company, a man with a great record at the company as a captain, under the fatigue caused misconception that he had been cleared to take off, although he had not, began his takeoff roll, colliding just moments later with a Pan Am jet on a fog shrouded runway.
Now imagine hundreds of fatigued cargo pilots operating around the clock due to this FAA ruling. Imagine a sleepy cargo crew misunderstanding an ATC radio call and ramming 850,000 pounds of plane, cargo and fuel into your family in a passenger plane innocently waiting to takeoff, albeit by accident, while seated on a passenger jet, one tightly regulated by the FAA. One thing will be for sure. The lawyers from the FAA and the cargo industry will be saying, "We need to do something about this."
So, we have a chance right now to "do something about this," and we ought to do it before we witness another tragedy such as Tenerife. The FAA should let the law of the people speak for the people. After all, it is their safety that is really the first priority, is it not? Cargo carriers have prospered under FAA safety regulations, countering the claims by their lawyers that safety would cost them business losses. Check their financial records. Now check the FAA and NTSB accident records. In fact the records show that  many if not most of the cargo crashes were the result of fatigue and other human factors, and not safety regulations. The ruinous losses of these accidents is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And these are fully  documented losses of property and lives, they are not suppositions, arguments or cases put together in a law office.
This other "study" of potential business losses due to safety regulations is purely speculative, oppositional and entirely hypothetical. There doesn't appear to be a shred of real evidence in the entire argument. So, I think that it is time that we base our decisions of safety, of life and death on reality, on data, on facts and on history and not on the unsubstantiated claims of lawyers, accountants and other business professionals.

Is Safety Necessary or Unnecessary?:Who has the better argument?

I think that we have to rethink this logic. Some who say safety is unncessary or what want proof that safety is necessary are not using good logic.

Safety recommendations do one very special thing that no other recommendation does. Safety recommendation give us SOP modifications, checklists and limitations that help us to do our operation more correctly.
Some of you may say, "Don't you mean more safely?"
I would respond by saying, "No, not more safely, but more correctly." Why? Remember that our stated goal in all operations is safety-not 90% safety but 100% safety.
So when we figure out how to do operations safer, it is really most often soon adopted as SOP. Safety finds new and better ways to operate and then training, ops and standardization offices figure out how to turn that "safety innovation" into a New SOP, limit or checklist.
Right? Isn't our SOP being revised all the time? Aren't our Jeps procedures being revised regularly? Do we not see constant improved regulations all the time?
Did all of these improvements in SOP, Jeps, limits, regs really cost us all that much money? How much money did we waste to mishaps using flawed SOP's?
So Safety is not as expensive as some would try to make us believe. In fact, more often than not, safety has reduced our costs, reduced our expenses, make our operation more correct, effective and greatly more efficient.
Remember the sight of the Delta L1011 crash in Dallas on the front page of the papers? Remember the United DC 10 crash in Sioux City all over every TV stations for weeks? Look at Tenerife, a classic air tragedy. Look at TWA 800; all over the news for months. Look at the dozens and dozens of microburst related mishaps and the hundreds of dead.
Safety helps us to do our job better. Do those that claim that "safety is guilding the lily" with unnecessary and expensive changes really have a case?
Does their argument really "hold water?" In fact hasn't safety made our operations more correct?

Cost and Benefit Analysis vs Successful Safety Programs: Is the FAA and A4A Using Flawed Logic to Manage Safety Improvements? Do Pilots Actually Know Safety Better?

Air Transport Association (ATA),  now Airlines for America (A4A) and the FAA can not claim all of the credit for the huge improvement in airline safety over the last decade in my opinion.  As a matter of fact and record, both the FAA and ATA now A4A, opposed, and opposed with great vigor, virtually every safety of flight recommendation from pilot groups and pilot associations, from individual pilot recommendations directly to the FAA and/or the employer company, from the NTSB and from just about every safety foundation, association and organization, not just in the last decade, but in the rememberable history of this writer. It has only been after sustained high levels of Washington lobbying, high profile professional papers delivered, public relations campaigns and other dedicated efforts to change current regulations, rules and laws that the FAA has agreed to any safety regulatory or legislative improvements, and on the part of commercial airline companies, often only after very tough pilot association legal negotiations for contractual safety improvements.

What are some examples of these safety improvements opposed by the FAA and A4A? Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS) for Cargo, Flight Duty and Rest Regulations, Improved Flight Crew  Training Requirements, Cockpit Smoke Equipment, improved security, higher ATC standards for aircraft handling and routing around severe convective weather, Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting (ARFF) or Crash Fire and Rescue (CFR) at airport equipment, manning requirements and training, hazardous materials air cargo handling and carriage rules, regulations and laws.

Again, these are but a few of the many safety improvements worked for by commercial pilot associations, pilot trade groups, as well as various global flight safety oriented foundations.

Now let's talk ASAP, the Aviation Safety Action Program. A joint commercial pilot committee worked from 1993 to Sept 1995 on the Proposed Draft FAA Advisory Circular for Airline ASAP, the AC being based on the prototype successful program established by American, Allied Pilots Assn and the FAA Southwest Region several years prior. The FAA however sat on this proposed AC, until publishing their own very similar first draft AC in Oct 1998 . The Final ASAP Advisory Circular appeared I believe in 2001. Many airlines then resisted ASAP participation, until finally agreeing and adopting ASAP in the mid 2000's, fully ten years after it was initially recommended by the pilot group.

So I would challenge anything stated about safety by the FAA and A4A in terms of their advocacy and management thereof. In fact the FAA and A4A opposed ASAP and virtually all of these safety programs, that eventually became very valuable programs.

Could it be argued that FAA and A4A are anything but an impediment to airline safety?
Oh, one more important point. All of the safety recommendations made by pilot associations and adopted as regulation, rule or law, have worked!!  I would argue that this is why the commercial airline industry is safer today than 10 years ago. That is why we are safer today than ten years ago, not because the FAA and A4A have argued the supposed "Cost and Benefit Analysis" at every safety program proposed.

It is my opinion that lawyers for the FAA and A4A have used "Cost and Benefit Analysis" in some cases to delay safety programs and have not, in so doing, protected the industry from costs. Quite the opposite is true in my opinion. This delay may have actually led to repeated human factors mishaps, of the type being suffered throughout the industry again and again without resolution.

These costs related to commercial aviation disasters have wreaked financial havoc in the commercial airline industry by allowing hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of lives to be wasted, while substituting legal wrangling and administrative procedures to take precedence over safety.

For safety, look to the person with a personal stake in the argument and improvement. Do not look to the supposed argument of "Cost Benefit Analysis" to find any valid and valuable safety programs.

Is SMS Working For Your Orgnaization?

Safety is like virtue, in that safety is its own reward. Here are a few additional self audit questions that supplement those provided as policy guidance by Flight Safety Foundation President Bill Voss [in the May 2012 edition of AeroSafety World http://flightsafety.org/aerosafety-world-magazine/current-issue]: 1. Is a safety program valuable and working or is it a well documented paper work of art? 2. Is the safety manager someone everyone knows, who is out and about everyday tracking down and eliminating hazards and communicating with anyone and everyone OR is the manager writing glowing self-appraisals in an office away from the operation? 3. Is the safety program in place to serve the interests of the company that is to save the company the enormous costs of the injuries and damage caused by accidents and the time wasted investigating these OR is the safety program self serving and in many ways in opposition to or in conflict with the company, standing in the way of aggressive and innovative operations? 4. Is the safety program engaged with every employee and member of the organization, every manager, supervisor and administrator OR is it a window dressing program ready to display to the next outside inspector, auditor or investigator? 5. Is the safety program constantly reinventing itself, finding what else is wrong and fixing it, keeping one step ahead of the next mishap OR is it too busy investigating last month’s accident to be involved in preventing next weeks mishap? In my opinion, if you add these five questions to the great audit base recommended by Flight Safety Foundation President Bill Voss, you might be able to use SMS as a way to make your company better and better, year after year. Remember that Safety, like virtue, is its own reward.

GoAround when Cleared for Visual Approach

This is a big ATC issue in the US, especially at airports with heavy traffic. A flight cleared for a visual approach requires so much less attention and separation than does a flight cleared for an instrument approach. International pilots flying into the US from abroad need to be aware of this differentiation in ATC procedures from what they may be accustomed to, in order that they are prepared to execute the correct GA procedure, all depending on the most recent clearance from approach control. While flying internationally, it was my experience that ATC and (or ATS) seldom if ever changed the approach clearance from an instrument to a visual, even after the crew reported "Runway IN SIGHT". Most often Approach Control just acknowledged the call and switched the flight to tower. But the flight clearance was still the same instrument clearance, and therefore MAP clearance was still valid. But most often this is not so in the US. It is a very important training goal for non-US airlines to familiarize their international crew members flying into the US to be aware of the clearance changeover by approach control, from an instrument approach to a visual approach and all that goes along with that clearance changeover, most especially being the ATC expectations for flight crew actions in the event they get a tower directed GA after being cleared for the visual approach. ATC does not expect that the crew will fly the MAP as published, but rather will stay with tower for either a visual integration into a VFR downwind pattern or a handover back to approach control for radar vectors back into the instrument patterns to return the flight back to final. If the crew just begins to fly the MAP without clearance, there may very well be separation issues, since the airspace for the MAP may not have been protected ahead of time. This again is the consequence of Approach Control changing the clearance to a visual approach.