JamesNoBrakes

I think you're missing a very elemental part of this:

Voluntary safety data dissemination in exchange for not having the fear of punitive action to address and fix safety issues.

What happens if those issues don't get fixed?

FXLAX

Are we talking about the same pilot doing the same thing over and over again? Or different pilots having the same issue? In the latter, the fact that it happens to many different pilots shows evidence that the issue is larger than the pilots. So punishing the pilots is not going to fix it. That’s the whole point! Punishment (not being allowed into the ASAP) doesn’t fix the issue because it doesn’t get to the root cause. In the former, I do believe that at some point, if the same pilot keeps having the same issue, something needs to be done with that pilot.

Telling an entire pilot group that if they have the same issue again that many of their colleagues have been having, they will not be afforded the protections of the ASAP, is punitive, goes against Just Culture, and ultimately doesn’t get to the root causes. Using fear is just the lazy way of trying to “fix” the issue that actually makes it worse by not getting the information from pilots to help prevent it. If a crew had a situation in which there was a close call in them stalling, will they report it and give information on how they were able to trap the error or what threats were present during their flight that led to the close call? All that valuable information that could be used to educate or just pass along things to look out for, etc will never be collected if you refuse any pilot the protection of the ASAP. That is a tragedy that should’ve have been avoided by the union having this conversation and laying out a credible threat as to why it would force them to withdraw from the program if they proceed.

What point of view are you coming at this from? Are you a line pilot, a check airman, a DPE, and ERC member, FAA inspector, airline management?

Stan446

give it a rest

JamesNoBrakes

I guess we don't see eye to eye on this.

The entire purpose of the ASAP program is to improve flight safety. If the same issue keeps coming up and it's a significant safety issue, it's not working. The purpose isn't to give a free pass to everyone, it's to fix safety issues. What you are describing is a program that is not functioning on the most basic level.

rickair7777

The culture was plenty just for a long time. But the stuff we do is terribly unforgiving and at some point there has to be accountability.

"Just Culture" in airline aviation does not actually mean infinite, unlimited get out of jail free cards in all circumstances.

I WAS there, it was plenty just, they informed, educated, begged, and pleaded and it kept happening over and over again.

The straw that broke the camel's back: crew in a high altitude hold let AS decay through inattention over about a ten minute period, stalled and dropped about 20,000 through a loaded holding stack.

rickair7777

Unions at regionals are fine, I'm not opposed I just recognize their severe limitations. Fundamentally conditions at regionals are determined by management and market forces, not unions. If a regional union actually gets too far ahead of the curve, they'll be gone within a few short years. When I was a noob the best regionals (where people most wanted to work) were comair, xjt, and skywest. I live in the west.

We lost a few to covid... how long after covid until a couple new ones start up? They'll vote in a union soon enough and start the long climb out of the startup hole.

Enginethunder

Unbelievable. I hope that crew got their certificates shredded after that one. No excuse.

FXLAX

Obviously we don’t. But we do agree on the purpose of the ASAP. Where we disagree is on how to best use it. When you unilaterally don’t let a pilot group to use the ASAP, you stop being able to gather data that may help alleviate the situation. Like I said, there could be many crews who learn from a situation that can be disseminated to everyone else. But if they don’t file an ASAP for fear their situation won’t be covered by the program, they are not going to report it. So how does that help flight safety?

If we are talking about the same exact pilots making the same mistakes, then I’m all for not allowing those specific pilots into the program.

FXLAX

Again, if we are talking about the same pilots making the same mistakes, then I completely agree. I simply disagree with the FAA not letting anyone into the program for a specific type of event. That doesn’t help anyone. If this was happening to different pilots through a period of time, it’s more indicative to management’s culture at the airline than anything else. It sounds like they unjustly targeted one group, the pilots, when they should’ve targeted management to get to the root cause. Otherwise you get situations where you have a crew get into a UAS (not necessarily actually stall) yet not report it. And voila, the incidents have magically declined.

FXLAX

I guess we measure the good unions do in a different way. I listed a partial list of what a union does for pilots. None of that turns into bad things just because a few regionals go away. Thousands of pilots at now failed airlines have been helped throughout the decades because of their union. Their managements’ decisions and or economic realities doesn’t make the help they do for the pilots any less impactful to them. If those unions didn’t exist, they couldn’t provide the services they did and still do provide.