Quote:
Originally Posted by DashGirl
As much as I love to fly, flying 121 is very stressful..It seems that even when the industry is doing well it's a constant struggle to keep your job as there are so many ways to lose it..This is perhaps the single most aggravating aspect of it all. I feel like the industry is designed in a way where a pilot must consistently face forces that are actively trying to relieve you of your job and certificate at every turn. It's like every leg is a check-ride. When you finish one uneventfully you pass go and may take off on the next one. I don't like the simplest of human errors being just cause for you to loose your job or get suspended even when no harm was done. The industry is woefully over-regulated. In my opinion it is so to the point where I have to wonder if the over-abundance of convoluted regulatory issues in itself makes things less safe...
These sentiments are not uncommon, but it's useful to understand WHY things are the way they are....
The FAA, the company, and other organizations are concerned with CYA in the event of an accident. Our regs, rules, and procedures are designed to help steer us away from previously identified pitfalls, but more importantly, they are designed to protect those above us in the event of investigations or lawsuits. This protection takes the form of trying to account for every known or conceiveable thing which could go wrong, and directing us to avoid it.
Regulators and managers can always think up something new to require of us, but they essentially never REMOVE any old requirements. They are also not real good about streamlining convoluted documents which have grown over time with input from many different folks. There is no personal incentive to edit/remove existing requirements, so nobody bothers.
I fully agree that our rules are usually excessively cumbersome and confusing...there are often many possible interpretations of a given requirement, and the only correct answer is what the particular fed in your face happens to think.
About the only thing we can do is realize that the best pilots in the world could get in regulatory trouble on a bad day and just accept that as a risk of doing business. Avoid the obvious gotchas, fly safe, and do your best. I do believe that good piloting and judgement can avoid accidents in 121 about 100% of the time (not counting mechanical failures)...121 has enough layers of redundancy that we should be able to avoid peeling the whole onion.