Under scrutiny

“One of the issues that rose out of that was issues of pilot training and also general aviation regulations and safety issues,” he told Australian Aviation in an interview during late October.

“The more information I was given and that I dug into the issue, it seemed that there was a pressing need for a Senate inquiry to look into this, to make recommendations that would be constructive.”

That has seen the Senate refer the matter of pilot training and airline safety standards to its Committee on Rural Affairs and Transport. The inquiry will look into and report 10 terms of reference, covering requirements and experience for pilots, CASA’s ability to oversee aviation safety regulations and technology, as well as aviation incident reporting processes and consideration of the Transport Safety Investigation Amendment (Incident Reports) Bill 2010.

Senator Xenophon says that rather than being a witch hunt, the inquiry is deliberately keeping an open mind to the various issues, and is ultimately focused ensuring that Australia stays at the forefront of aviation safety, rather than having to be reactive.

“I don’t think anyone wants to get to the stage where there is a disaster that provokes a response. We just want to keep sure that we have the best standards and to maintain those standards,” he said.

The Committee had opened for submissions until October 26, with the report on the inquiry due on November 17, shortly after Australian Aviation went to press.

The inquiry has been welcomed by AIPA, which was quick to make a submission to the inquiry, while it also released an accompanying ‘statement of concern’ outlining a number of other concerns outside of the terms of reference for the inquiry.

“We hope this inquiry will provide the impetus needed to drive air safety into the future, dealing not only with new technological challenges, but also the risks associated by an increasingly cut-throat aviation sector determined to cut costs to compete with Asian cost structures,” said AIPA president Captain Barry Jackson.

Jetstar CEO Bruce Buchanan has also welcomed the inquiry. “It’s good to get the facts out,” he told The Australian newspaper in October. “What we need to separate here is what’s the union political agenda and what’s the real issues on the table. And there are real issues and it’s good to get them out on the table and discuss them.”

Buchanan’s comments come with context, as over the past year it has frequently locked horns with AIPA over the past year on a range of issues. This has included with its cadet scheme which would see some pilots move into first officer positions on its A320 fleet with only 200 hours of flying experience. AIPA has likened this to “handing the keys of the Ferrari to a bunch of P-Platers.”

But Senator Xenophon has cautioned against viewing the push for the inquiry by pilot groups as part of an industrial campaign against the airlines. “Insofar as pilots have been advocating for this, I think we need to listen to their views. It would be foolish to dismiss these concerns as being part of some industrial campaign,” he added.

The reaction from pilots has been strong, with a number of experienced (and vocal) pilots seeing the inquiry as a watershed moment that could shape the Australian aviation industry for many years to come. As such, a number of submissions were received from various unions, airlines and members of the public, while a number of blog posts and online discussions over the various points on inquiry have also opened up.

It appears that there may be some concerns that the world-leading reputation that Australia’s aviation industry has had for its safety may behave some foundation, given a number of serious incidents in recent years.

One of the highest profile incidents has been the near wheels-up landing of a Jetstar A320 at Melbourne Airport in 2007. The incident occurred while the aircraft was on final approach, and with the airport at the time below minimas, the pilot in charge elected to conduct a go-around. However, the aircraft continued to descend until it was only about 30ft from the ground with the landing gear up before the crew realised that they had not advanced the aircraft’s throttles to the takeoff/go-around detent.

As well as raising questions over Jetstar’s reporting procedures as the incident was not investigated by the ATSB until it was leaked to the media, the investigation found deficiencies in training given to Jetstar pilots by Air New Zealand, which differed from Airbus’s recommended procedures. Subsequently, the airline changed its go-around procedures to meet with those of Airbus.

Third party outsourcing of training for airline pilots was also called into question in the hard landing accident of QantasLink Boeing 717 VH-NXE at Darwin in 2008. In its final safety report, the ATSB found that “There was no clear division of responsibilities between the aircraft operator and the third party training provider in regard to ensuring the standards of flight training met all of the operator’s requirements, which had the potential to reduce training effectiveness.”

That has since led CASA to fast-track changes to Civil Aviation Safety Regulation Part 142 to clarify that responsibility for flight training standards ultimately rests with the operator rather than the training provider.

More recently, questions have been asked about how airlines manage their safety incident reporting systems in the current era of internally controlled safety management systems. The issue came to light with a recent ATSB investigation into an oscillation in an aileron on board a Tiger Airways A320 on May 19 2009, when it was found that an identical event had occurred on the same aircraft eight months prior. That event hadn’t been reported to the ATSB, although it was required to by the Transport Safety Investigation Act.

That event, along with the previous Jetstar incident in 2007 have been specifically identified in the terms of reference for the inquiry, as well as an examination of how reporting processes can be strengthened to improve safety and training and amendments to the Transport Safety Investigation Act.

A matter of hours?

Without doubt, the most contentious term of reference to the inquiry is the examination of whether the minimum number of flying hours for airline pilots needs to be increased, or rather if training quality needs to be enhanced.

Currently, CASA allows pilots holding a commercial pilots’ license with an instrument rating to gain an air transport pilots’ license (ATPL) with just over 200 hours of flying experience, while Multi-crew Pilot License holders require as little as 40 hours practical flying experience with 200 hours of simulator time, which AIPA argues is too low.

“AIPA is of the view that the current minimum flight hours required to hold a pilot licence that allows the holder to act as a crewmember in Regular Public Transport (RPT) are insufficient to provide the appropriate balance between technical skills, knowledge and experience that would enable a pilot to adequately perform that role in all reasonably foreseeable circumstances,” it said in its submission to the committee.

Furthermore, AIPA has also noted that having an inexperienced first officer could place additional strain on the captain in an emergency situation.

“This imbalance in workload can significantly reduce the effectiveness of the crew, particularly in situations where the First Officer fails to provide the Captain with the level of support required. In abnormal situations, the failure to provide adequate support may shift the crew from a two crew operation past single pilot into a degraded mode from which recovery may be extremely difficult.”

The issue has been topical in the US following the investigation into the crash of a Colgan Air Bombardier Q400 in February last year. The US National Transportation Safety Board determined the crash was a result of a range of failures by the flight crew to follow procedures, as well as inadequate procedures by Colgan for airspeed selection and management in icing conditions.

While procedures were cited as the probable cause, pilot unions and members of Congress seized on other comments from the NTSB calling on the FAA to address issues of fatigue, training and inadequate experience. Subsequently, Congress this year passed a bill which requires all ATPL holders to have completed a minimum of 1500 flying hours prior to being able to take control of an aircraft on an RPT service. Somewhat ironically, both pilots involved in the Colgan accident had significantly more than 1500 hours’ experience.

Complicating the matter somewhat are indications that US may change the current strict requirement for a pilot to have 1500 flying hours’ experience before taking a first officer role in a public airline. In the legislation which brought in the limit, the FAA administrator “may allow specific academic training courses … to be credited toward the total flight hours required.”

Given that many pilots in the US undertake flying training in association with tertiary education, the industry there has been pushing to reduce the flight training requirement down to 750 hours with appropriate academic study making up for the remainder.

FAA administrator Randy Babbit has previously gone on record as saying that he supports higher training standards rather than higher flight hours, noting that “experience is not measured by flight time alone.”

It is a point that is not lost on Xenophon, who sees the 1500 hour requirement as merely a point of discussion for the inquiry. “I’ve had representations made to me that it is not a question of the hours alone, but the quality of training,” he said. “That’s why this enquiry is so important. The reason why 1500 hours was put there was to link it to what the US has done and [to establish] if that is applicable here or not.”

The airlines have reacted strongly against the concept of introducing a similar requirement in Australia, fearing that it would do major damage to the industry.

“A minimum requirement of 1500 hours for airline pilots would be an absolute disaster,” said Rex managing director Jim Davis. “It would mean the end of all pilot cadet programmes in Australia and make it impossible for airlines to source enough pilots to cope with planned future expansion.”

“This would have a disastrous effect amongst small and regional operators as their pilot ranks would get plundered by the larger airlines as we saw in FY08, when Rex lost half its pilots to the major airlines in one year. To stay in operation, the smaller operators would have no choice but to accept pilots from General Aviation with sufficient minimum hours but who may not have the desired skill level to be an airline pilot. This would lead to the opposite effect intended by the proposal,” he added.

Further, Rex has argued that there is no “scientific reason” to support the thesis that pilots with more than 1500 hours’ experience are of a higher standard than others. Instead, it points to testing of the pilots involved in its cadet program which shows that once flying in the airline that they score as well or higher than direct entry first officers.

“This is because of the fact that they are trained as airline pilots from day one rather than attending a standard CASA CPL course,” the airline said in its Senate submission.

Rex’s David has also argued that pilots in the ADF complete much less than 1500 hours of flying before they are granted their wings. Some of the submissions to the inquiry have also suggested that the same training outcomes in the military could be achieved in a civil setting with the right systems of training and greater use of synthetic trainers, although that assertion remains controversial with a number of pilot groups questioning the ability of synthetic trainers to replicate real-world emergency scenarios.

While it has been pushing for the imposition of a higher minimium standard, AIPA has not put forward a specific suggestions for the minimum hours required for an ATPL. “AIPA acknowledges that not all experience is the same and that there is inherent truth in the old maxim ‘one hour repeated a thousand times is not the same as a thousand hours.’ However, one rarely sees 25 year old MBAs running safety-critical enterprises,” AIPA said in its Statement of concern.

Instead, it has stated in its Senate submission that is believes that the “minimum number of hours must be a balance between skills, knowledge and behaviours versus the operational risk,” with different levels for high and low capacity RPT operations.

AIPA has also recommended that the way hours are built for ATPL pilots is weighted towards time spent in a multi-engine environment, “as opposed to the recognition of glider and ultralight experience.”

Interestingly, the other major pilot union, the Australian Federation of Airline Pilots said in its submission that it sees no pressing need to change the current 200 hour requirement. “On balance we believe that the current regulatory minima are appropriate. We also note that many individual operators overlay these minima with higher internal minimum experience levels.”

Paying for training

Aside from the issue of a minimum hours requirement, a number of terms of reference of the inquiry cover issues of training quality, how payment for various training schemes work and their possible impacts on airline safety.

With the advent of low cost airlines in 2000, ‘pay for training’ schemes came in which essentially have resulted in pilots paying for their type ratings and endorsements, either upfront or through a bond to their airline with a salary sacrifice over the time of that bond.

AIPA has labelled these arrangements as “inherently industry damaging and risk exacerbating schemes”. In addition, it says that placing bond arrangements or forcing pilots to bear the financial cost of their endorsements places greater stress on pilots, which are “associated with declines in flight standards and increased risk of accidents,” according to its submission.

As such, it is has recommend that “airline operators no longer be permitted to charge employees for post graduate training programs to fly specific aircraft types. In AIPA’s considered view, these forms of training should remain an airline’s cost of doing business.”

Similarly, close the Committee is expected to pay close attention to cadet schemes such as those run by Rex and Jetstar. Both AIPA and AFAP have noted that these schemes have their place, but should only be part of the recruiting process for airlines rather than the sole recruitment pool as is feared that they will become.

While it backs the approach of Rex in establishing its own flight school and making the appropriate pathways for its cadet pilots, AIPA has taken issue with Jetstar’s scheme. As well as the low hours that graduates from the scheme will have before moving into first officer positions, it argues that the scheme is “more motivated by financial engineering than a balanced response to a supply shortage.” It notes that some cadets in the scheme may pay up to $200,000 to complete their training, after which they are bonded for six years for a $21,000 scholarship.

Naturally, some operators have hit back at the notion that the funding of endorsements and other training schemes has an impact on safety outcomes. “Common sense tells us that the origin of the funding is irrelevant to the quality of the training and to the quality of the graduating pilot. The only relevant issue is the quality of the assessment process in place to ensure that only suitable graduates are accepted into the airline,” Rex said in its submission.

Major implications

The suggestions from some that safety standards in the Australian aviation industry have fallen in recent years cannot be taken lightly, and as such the inquiry and its subsequent recommendations are likely to have far-reaching implications.

Given the current political climate and the parlous state of the Parliament, pressure is likely to come on the government to strongly consider the recommendations put forward and legislate where necessary. Indeed, Senator Xenophon may use his influence with the Coalition (who supported his moves to block the cockpit access regulation changes) to ultimately push the government to give the committee recommendations thorough consideration.

But Senator Xenophon makes it clear that he does not want to see it become a political issue, but rather open up the opportunity for industry to work close with the government to ensure the continued safety of Australia’s skies.

“I would like to think that this inquiry would be an opportunity for reforms of the sector which obviously would involve a closer relationship with government,” he said. “Having a whack at the government is not going to resolve issues, which is what this is about.”