Originally Posted by
rickair7777
May not work for the FBI database. That is an intelligence/national security resource not just a law enforcement resource. I don't believe they ever delete anything.
It's an unfortunate regulatory quirk that airlines have access to that, and can apparently see information that a normal employer would not. IMO the FAA or TSA should have set policies for determining a pilot's moral fitness and should they make that determination internally, rather than allowing private companies access to the raw data...
Nice point, and while pilots suffer the system the way it works now as part of the flying game that does not mean it is necessarily fair. We all know how scary a traffic ticket gone awry makes us feel about job security, how expensive legal defense is, and how that misdemeanor we could not afford to fight when we were a teenager scuttles our chances of getting a better job now. I know of no other industry that paws through a persons past like flying does, which is good perhaps for keeping genuinely rotten people out of the cockpit but is not properly limited in scope or properly adjudicated to prevent invasive searches of the distant or irrelevant past. There should be a "morality check" of some kind the way we have now with the FBI file, but it should be run by a separate agency much the way NASA runs the self disclosure ASRS system. It should have a moving window to limit scope in time, a set of rules and guidelines, adjudication for disputes, and the ability to chase down abuses of the system.
I think we are due for a proverbial pendulum swing in the direction of pilot rights and this would be a key area to look at. Industry may even want such a reform because it could widen the eligible pilot pool by removing irrelevant, stale misdeeds from peoples' past and supply a set of standards for morally-supportable pilot eligibility.