Safety Alert from Flight Safety Pty Ltd

Finding 5: Air Crew Licencing

Finding 4 in this Newsletter series raised an issue addressing the critical balance between Safety and Profit - we also covered fatique as one of the high priority audit findings.

Disturbingly within the revolving economic cycles that beset us, lies an ominous cocktail of ingredients that mixed together can and has led to disaster. The combination of an economic downturn coupled with the inevitable conflict between cost and safety results in a Newton - 'third law of physics' parallel scenario, where for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The rebound back into an economic upturn increases the demand for air crew - this in turn places pressure on the Operator to provide the increasing manning levels necessary to meet demand. When the supply and demand chain breaks down as we have found in recent times, then the only alternative is to reduce the number of flights, or increase the numbers of available air crew - again we see the critical balance between cost and safety resurfacing. In reality, the reduction of revenue-generating flights is a last resort and only happens when it is impossible to stay within the regulatory framework.

Increased industry pressure has created the current acceptance of reduced air crew, minimum experience levels and this is cause for concern. There is little logic in the highlighted section of the extract as seen below.

The reduction in minimum experience levels to below the norm as previously ratified, has been sanctioned by I.C.A.O. (International Civil Aviation Organisation) and accepted and mandated by regulatory systems globally. The I.C.A.O. Amendment 167 to Annex 1 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation and supporting Procedures for Air Navigation Services - Training (PANS-TRG) established a new flight crew licence called the Multi-Crew Pilot Licence (MPL), which has now been promulgated.

Practical audit results globally have uncovered that this legislative change has undermined aviation safety. The following has relevance:

An audit conducted internationally revealed that First Officers on multi-engine RPT (Regular Public Transport) operations were coming straight out of an aviation academy with zero practical flying time.
Audits conducted generally have also shown that First Officers can be cleared to line with less than 5 hours, actual solo multi-engine time logged.

The question that has to be asked is - can these low-time First Officers handle a full-blown asymmetric emergency in IMC (Instrument Meteorolgical Conditions) if the Captain is incapacitated?