CVR Bill in Congress. NOT GOOD !!
 

Bill Seeks to Allow Airlines Access to Cockpit Conversations:

By ANDY PASZTOR

Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, plans to introduce a bill that would break a taboo in the airline industry: allowing airlines to use information from cockpit voice recorders in cases against pilots they want to discipline or fire.

Current labor contracts effectively bar major U.S. carriers from relying on information gathered from cockpit-recorders, or, in some cases, flight-data recorders to punish pilots or monitor their performance during trips. But the proposed legislation seeks to overturn those longstanding restrictions in both areas, which is already riling pilot union leaders.

The move also shines a spotlight on privacy and other complex legal questions surrounding the use of such information by airlines to make personnel decisions.

Today, cockpit voice recorder data doesn't become public or lead to actions against pilots unless there is an accident or serious incident investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration or the National Transportation Safety Board. Allowing airlines to use the information for their own personnel decisions would significantly open up an area that currently is considered to be an almost private sanctum for accident investigators.

Called the "Pilot Professionalism Assurance Act," the bill drafted by the Sen. DeMint envisions downloading voice or flight-data recorders "to discipline or discharge a pilot . . . for actions that endanger the safety or well being of passengers." The bill also proposes using previously sacrosanct recordings of cockpit conversations "to evaluate or monitor the judgment or performance of an individual pilot."

Sen. DeMint has not yet formally introduced his legislation and it is unclear what type of support it might find in Congress. The legislation is bound to face stiff resistance from both pilot unions -- and potentially the FAA and the NTSB. One of their principal objections is that the bill could put a chill on the current system of voluntary reporting of safety lapses by pilots. Currently, pilots are encouraged to file anonymous reports on safety problems that arise in the course of duty. Allowing airlines to review cockpit recordings could make pilots more reticent to report shortcomings because they might worry that they would be exposed to disciplinary action from their employer.

However, the bill comes in the wake of several commercial-aircraft accidents and incidents, including the bizarre October flight of a Northwest Airlines jet that lost contact with air-traffic controllers for more than an hour and overflew its destination. The pilots, whose licenses were revoked after the slip-up, told investigators they were engrossed in conversation about revised crew-scheduling procedures and became distracted by turning on and using their personal laptops on the flight deck.

That has created new impetus for stricter pilot oversight measures. There have been two attempts on Capitol Hill in recent weeks to draft legislation supporting installation of video recorders in cockpits. Pilot union officials successfully lobbied and managed to head off those efforts. The Air Line Pilots Association or ALPA, which is the largest pilot union in North America, is gearing up to quietly try to kill the DeMint bill before it is introduced, according to people familiar with the matter.

The escalating controversy focuses on how pilot professionalism conflicts with recent examples of distraction and lax safety standards in the cockpit. Randy Babbitt, the head of the FAA, has spoken out strongly on the need to enhance pilot performance and raise the safety bar by having larger airlines and veteran pilots mentor less experienced pilots at the smaller commuter partners.

But so far, the FAA chief has opposed drastic moves such as stripping cockpit recorders of the confidentiality they have enjoyed for decades. Currently, flight-data recorders are routinely screened for unusual occurrences, but the analysis is done privately inside each airline and the results generally don't become public.

John Prater, president of ALPA, has previously said media pressure shouldn't "lead our industry in a direction that is detrimental to the goal of accident and incident prevention."

Earlier this week. Mr. Prater put out a statement urging Congress to avoid "drafting legislation that simply reacts to events already under investigation."

Pilot Professionalism Assurance Act.... Think about that for a moment folks. This coming from a US congressman. Wow.. the arrogance of our government is staggering

2 things:

First, the passage of this bill is completely unavoidable, therefore ALPA, led by Prater, should throw its full weight and support behind the bill for immediate passage, that way ALPA can have a voice on how it's implemented.

Second, I propose a companion bill, the "Senator Professionalism Assurance Act" be submitted side by side with the bill concerning pilots. In it, Senators will be subject to continuous voice recording at all times while they are at work, and those recordings should be downloaded to discipline or discharge a senator . . . for actions that endanger the safety or well being of the citizens of the United States.

Further, these recordings of Senators at work will be downloaded for the broader purpose of evaluating or monitoring the judgment or performance of an individual Senator.

I am sure Senator DeMint will have no problem submitting BOTH bills for passage concurrently.

:mad:

Which party does he represent?

Republican from South Carolina.

Deleted...didn't respond quick enough

And a Conservative Republican! Imagine that!

Go Rebels!!!;))

Didn't they pull the CVR on the NW flight and it had already looped itself?

Maybe we could make put CVR Recorders in each Congress Member's Office for periodic use and review by the the FBI. We could call it the Congressional Politician Professionalism Assurance Act.

Yes but it's a relatively old CVR. Some of the newer solid-state digital models can go for 12 hours I believe. No doubt the airlines will find no trouble finding money to buy the latest CVRs if they're looking for cost savings by getting rid of some older, crankier pilots.

Well, looks like it's time to shoot off another letter to my representative and senators.

Enough Is Enough!!!! We Are Fed Up! Time To Shut It Down!

WHAT?!

This will never, ever see the light of day. I hope you're kidding. It hasn't even left the guy's office.

Yes, we'll start with this and after a few years of service we can approach the concept of video in the cockpit.

Just another knee jerk reaction with the emphasis on "jerk"(Mr. Senator). Nothing to see here.

I'm fairly certain he was being sarcastic and it was a reference to the Age 65 argument and what transpired 2 years ago.

Senator Jim DiMint
202-224-6121
demint.senate.gov (web site)
The Legislative Assistant on this matter is Tom Jones


Of course your own representatives should be contacted too.

There was a president that did that. He only got in trouble for 18 missing minutes. Go figure.


(for the non middle aged, it was President Nixon)

Random Drug and Alcohol testing and a voice recorder in chambers to "to evaluate or monitor the judgment or performance of an individual Senator" sounds like a good start.

:)

Ole Miss? The ONLY school where I would consider going to an SEC football game if the Vols aren't playing. Hopefully next time it will be a mid afternoon kickoff though. :cool:

This story makes no sense.

"Current labor contracts effectively bar major U.S. carriers from relying on information gathered from cockpit-recorders, or, in some cases, flight-data recorders to punish pilots or monitor their performance during trips. But the proposed legislation seeks to overturn those longstanding restrictions in both areas, which is already riling pilot union leaders."

To wit: no matter what Congress passes, labor can still negotiate to not allow the company to use CVR or FDR data to punish/monitor performance.

Frankly, I was unaware that most companies don't already have this right, and I didn't know most labor unions (as this implies) already spend negotiating capital on this.

I think this story is trying to say that Congress wants the FAA to randomly sample CVR's and FDR's for improper pilot procedure. While this certainly would SUCK, I'd have to say, get used to the idea. I think as technology gets better and better, airplanes and pilots are only going to be monitored more and more.

The rub is that it probably WILL improve safety. It's also going to weed out more pilots, most of whom probably won't deserve it. Ah well.

Well, I'm not bidding a long haul category anymore if this passes.

I'm not sure you're right. If there is a new law that bans such agreements, inlcuding those already in place, you can't... re-negotiate an illegal agreement. Like it or not, Congress matters, and laws carry the force... of law.

You can get used to the idea of periodic checkrides, medicals, and line checks, but it's pretty hard to conceive this group accepting monitoring devices. We have CVR's and FDR for the prupose of making the skies safer, and they work. Very well. Using them for other purposes, and turning them over to HR, would be disastrous. Not only would we become disfunctional paranoids, but the airlines would also be forced to use the data, and I don't think they want to do that. Sure, there is a chief pilot or two that dreams about this stuff at night, but most legal or HR departments would probably shiver at the thought. For starters, every one of your mistakes they failed to punish for, they would be accountable for. And if they punished you for every mistake, and spent the time reviewing your actions, there would be no pilot left that's fit for duty, since we are in an error-intolerant industry, not an error-free industry.

On the flip side, you would have thousands of unemployed pilots available to review flights by the few pilots yet to be fired. It would build into a feverd pitch, with the last flying pilot being reviewed several hundred thousand times, by the remaining, non-flying, "pilots".

So I'm not getting used to that idea, and neither should you.

Not to mention all the legitimate claims by pilots who could say "I was fired for this, but this other pilot wasn't." There would be a staggering amount of information available for pilots to start wrongful termination suits.

Yes, I am kidding.

I'm referencing the last piece of asinine legislation that much to my bewilderment was supported fully and completely by ALPA, to the detriment of most of its members.

Honestly I don't see ALPA doing anything other than fighting this, however, nothing the association does surprises me anymore.

Suspension Of Service

That sums it up right there. Guess we should be able to record all there conversations and discipline them when they screw up. I don't think we have enough cell space. IDIOTS!!!!!:rolleyes:

I bet the CVR is "broken" a lot if this happens. I used to fly with a captain on the 3 holer who would pull several CBs on his way to the seat.

His reason- "If we ever crash, I'm going to make that chair warming SOB work harder to figure out what we screwed up in the 10 seconds we had to do anything.":D

We all know that there a large number of things that pilots can do to render the CAM (cockpit area microphone) useless.

This is NOT the place to discuss them.

Joe

I agree with most of what you write. Nevertheless, I think this is yet another example of an article written by a report who knows little or nothing about the industry he's covering.


That Congressional busy bodies would like to give CVR access to the FAA for spot checks isn't anything new; it's a idea that comes up from time to time.

I have a hard time believing that Congress would think it wise or necessary that private contractors (unions and airlines) should not be able to enter agreements as to what CVR data may be used for. It's micromanagement on a ridiculous scale, and I doubt that Congress even has the authority to do so.

I believe the airline corporations will fight this as well. I can only imagine the litigators salivating over this information for suits against the airline for anything from ground delays to inflight medical emergencies and EVERYTHING in between.
I used to be a locomotive engineer and the rail roads fought off the notion of voice recorders simply to help them hide from liability in accident investigations.
I can hear it now " the pic neglected to call ramp control to get a gate so I could take a dump"

The CVR in my aircraft has a CB. Our manual does not allow us to reset the CB with out MX resetting it. Anything else I can fix or find a solution to?

I'd personally like to thank those two idiots flying that plane that overflew MSP for this.

Why can't you just say you were sleeping or something? Instead you say some stupid story about a laptop computer and ruin it, in many different ways, for the entire friggen industry. I've never seen pilots get so much attention and multiple bills being brought before congress for doing something so stupid that didn't result in a bunch of deaths. Thanks a million guys.

We're heading toward a gestapo state for airline pilots. Clueless congressinal idiots want to appoint themselves "backseat drivers" to monitor and discipline pilots for actions THEY consider "unprofessional". Even worse, they'll seek to use this against pilots in financial lawsuits to bankrupt them in accident/incidents.

Pretty soon, all the true experienced pilots will tell congress and the flying public to "JAM IT !!!" and quit. Let's how the industry does with inexperienced kids to pick up the slack.

When I retire (perhaps sooner rather than later), I intend to either drive virtually everywhere in the continental U.S. or fly my own airplane. The only time I'd fly commercial is International and I'll be using foreign carriers only.

Congressional idiots like this clown can stuff it.

In most other countries this would result in a strike. It's illegal here. I say we threaten it anyways, and carry through if Obama signs. Does he really want to be the person responsible for a massive nationwide airline strike that brings a struggling economy to its knees, all over CVRs? I think not. The threat should be enough...if ALPA has the balls to even threaten illegal action.

So not only is this guy an idiot, but he has an assistant (probably) named (after) Tom Jones...
The singer known for "what's New *****cat" and "Sex Bomb"

I wrote to DeMint earlier and suggested he lead the effort to enact a Professionalism bill in the both chambers of Congress before he would think to do so for private industry. I even cited a member of his party from his own state (Rep. Joe Wilson) need to "guidance" from such a bill before the public should see its effects. Much less his state's governor...

OK, here's the deal.......I'll let you wire me if you let me wire you.

Deal?

Can't somebody just dig out the minutes of the meetings when FDR and CVR were first being discussed so that we can get the quotes and promises that these would NEVER be used in the manner they are now proposing....

This is another prime example of why you give the Govt or the company ANYTHING. It's like creeping communism... all they need is a foot in the door for legit sounding reasons, and then they can expand things slowly over time... which is what we are seeing now. We need to dig up the orginal debates with them promising this woudl never happen, and then shove their own words down their throats.

Shoreguy, exactly what I was thinking. . .

The business of the government is certainly important enough, and screwed up often enough to allow for recording devices to be installed in every office and conference room in Washington.

But, that's the aptitude of your average politician people. The guy couldn't even see that argument coming.

ALPA? Balls? come on man you know better then that.

So this would be the "PP A$$ ACT"?

It doesn't.