Air Safety Quality Control

[CD]

Air Safety's Quality Control
Staffing Allocations Raise New Concerns About Proper Practices

The Wall Street Journal
By DANIEL MICHAELS and ANDY PASZTOR
May 8, 2008

More planes are flying than ever before, but the number of people who do everything from piloting them to fixing them isn't keeping pace. The growing shortage is raising fresh concerns about air safety.

Industry and government experts are worried that a looming dearth of pilots, aircraft inspectors and air-traffic controllers around the world could place new strains on maintaining some of the advances in airline safety of the past two decades.

In a recent survey of 142 aviation professionals world-wide, 56% said they expect airline safety will stay the same or decline in the next five years, according to British consulting group Ascend Worldwide Ltd., which conducted the poll. The primary reason cited: a shortage of experienced personnel.

"We know how to make the system even safer than it is, but we're going to lose ground if we fail to manage growth within the limits of our human resources," says Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, an international nonprofit organization based in Washington.

Some of the strains have already begun to show. Recent independent safety audits found a glaring need for technical personnel in countries including India, Israel and Belgium. In India, one of the world's fastest-growing aviation markets, half of the jobs in some government aviation-oversight offices were vacant.

In the U.S., staffing problems among both carriers and federal regulators were partly to blame for recent maintenance lapses at Southwest Airlines Co. and AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, which resulted in airport chaos because of canceled flights. Across Europe, airlines often are forced to zigzag around big countries such as Poland and others that don't have enough air-traffic controllers. Even oil-rich Norway has 20% too few air-traffic controllers, according to the Norwegian airspace agency.

Thursday, the International Air Transport Association, or IATA, a global trade group, plans to release safety statistics for 2007 that show a rise in the overall number of airliner accidents from 2006, albeit with fewer total fatalities, after several years of declines in the world-wide accident rate.

The consequences extend beyond just safety. Personnel shortages could also crimp sales at aerospace companies, including Boeing Co. and European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co.'s Airbus unit. Jetliners already sit idle in parts of Latin America for lack of pilots.

Behind the new worries about safety are massive changes whipsawing the global aviation industry. In mature markets like the U.S. and Western Europe, soaring fuel prices and rising competition from budget carriers are squeezing airline finances and forcing airlines to do more with less. Smaller work forces and cost-cutting measures like loading and refueling planes in a hurry leave staff less margin for error, industry officials warn.

Meanwhile, fast-growing countries such as China, India and some Middle Eastern states are snapping up jetliners as never before. Airline fleets and passenger numbers are growing so quickly that airports, air-traffic controllers and safety inspectors can't keep up. Rich new markets like Persian Gulf emirates are handling breakneck growth by hiring staff from other countries, compounding staff shortages in countries from Europe to Africa.

Flying is still much less risky than it was two decades ago, even in parts of Africa and Asia long prone to air disasters. Today, crashes in the U.S. are at an all-time low and deaths from air crashes world-wide are also near historical lows, with about one crash for each million departures.

Industry and government experts over recent years have jumped in to help countries where accidents surged, including South Korea, Nigeria and Russia. Also, international groups have publicized the most egregious shortcomings, prompting many countries to tighten lax regulation, officials say.

The European Union in 2006 created a global blacklist of countries and carriers considered unsafe, which also has jolted many countries to boost safety. IATA has ratcheted up minimum safety standards for all of its 240 airlines.

But the industry has yet to grapple with the shortage of personnel. The gap is most pronounced for pilots. "It's time to ring the warning bell on pilot availability" and devise new solutions because "this is an issue that will face all of us," says IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani.

Some experts project a shortage of 42,000 pilots world-wide by 2020. Pilot-union leaders say some U.S. carriers are using special programs allowing co-pilots to fly with as few as 50 hours of cockpit time in big planes -- far below the hundreds of hours usually required -- because of intense demand. Filling the gap won't be easy because educating pilots takes years.

In Western countries, an entire generation of military-trained pilots is hitting retirement and air forces aren't churning out enough replacements. Sophisticated fleets of business jets are expanding quickly and sucking up cockpit crews who once would have worked on commercial flights. Small regional airlines, which generally hire young and less-experienced pilots and ground staff, have shifted from slow propeller planes to fast and more complicated new regional jets.

The shortage is raising concerns that some pilots don't have adequate training or experience to deal with adverse conditions, especially in developing countries. In Brazil, pilots at TAM Linhas Aéreas SA last year overshot a São Paulo runway and smashed a new Airbus jet into a building during stormy weather, killing more than 190 people.

The pilots were apparently confused about how to reduce engine power and apply reverse thrust.

More than 110 people died aboard an Armenian airliner in May 2006 after pilots disagreed with controllers about the severity of weather conditions at their destination.

The crew botched an aborted landing, missed rudimentary steps to climb away safely, ordered contradictory maneuvers and ultimately slammed into the Black Sea.

Similar problems confront air-traffic management. The International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers' Associations, an umbrella group for controllers' labor unions, estimates global aviation faces a current shortage of 3,000 controllers. Federation officials argue that the shortage is actually much greater because many controllers are already working heavy overtime. In recent years, controllers' stress and fatigue have contributed to accidents in Brazil, Switzerland and the U.S.

Air-traffic managers say understaffing should create annoying delays -- not accidents -- because harried controllers put planes in holding patterns. But officials admit slips are possible. David McMillan, director general of Eurocontrol, a pan-European air-traffic management agency, said that when airspace is filled to capacity, "there are going to be more opportunities for things to go wrong."

Full story here...

[Widow]

Funny I was just reading this ...

May 10, 2008

Safety fears as staff shortage hits aviation
Rhys Blakely in Bombay


A chronic shortage of airline pilots, engineers and air traffic controllers is grounding flights and stoking safety concerns around the world.

Airlines, already buffeted by record-high oil prices, are cutting routes and even flying around badly affected countries in the wake of a skills crunch. A spokesman for the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the industry body, said that a dearth of trained staff was becoming “a serious global issue ... as aviation becomes a low-cost industry”.

The problem is hitting the fastest-growing markets the hardest. In India, where the middle class has embraced flying and passenger volumes surged by 30 per cent last year, airlines cannot recruit enough pilots. This week Air India, the national carrier, was forced to scrap a route to London for want of crew.

Meanwhile, shortages of technical personnel have affected countries ranging from Israel, where a government committee recently found that aviation safety was in dire straits, to the Republic of Ireland, where air traffic controllers threatened to strike this year, claiming that they could not deal with a significant increase in the number of flights.

The problems come after years of cost cuts. The IATA estimates that airlines have increased their labour productivity by two thirds since 2001 by reducing capacity. There are also suggestions that the sharp drop in pilots' earnings after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 - the highest salaries have fallen by a third, to about £100,000 - has turned would-be cockpit crew members off the industry at a time when global air traffic is growing by 6 per cent a year.

Existing talent is migrating to the most lucrative markets. In Africa, which American officials has suggested is suffering “an exodus” of aircraft engineers, air travel is six times more lethal than in Europe, according to the IATA.

A British Airways spokesman said that the airline had not encountered problems hiring pilots so far because of its status as “an aspirational carrier that pays very competitively”. However, he added that BA was aware of what he called a larger issue surrounding a finite resource.

Time lags in training are coming into play, carriers say. Air India pulled its service from Calcutta to London because of a shortage of Boeing 777 commanders, who need to accumulate flying hours over three to four years before they are qualified.

Flights between Delhi, Bombay, Chicago and New York will also be affected. A spokesman said: “We have tapped all resources, retrained staff and brought in ex-pat pilots where the markets permit, but still we have shortages.”

It is estimated that more than two new pilots a day are needed to keep up with demand on the sub-continent, but there are also concerns for the state of the aircraft they will fly. A recent report found that half the positions in some government-run offices responsible for aviation safety checks in India were unfilled.

The highly trained staff that direct the passage of aircraft from the ground are also in short supply. The International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers estimates a shortage of 3,000 controllers, although many staff already work significant overtime and claim that the true figure could be higher.

There have been reports of aircraft being directed to fly around countries such as Poland because there were too few controllers on duty to ensure their safe passage.

A wing and a prayer

— Worldwide demand for new commercial pilots is running at 18,000 a year

— Maximum global training capacity for commercial pilots is 15,000 a year

— India requires 5,000 new pilots annually

— Global passenger numbers are growing at 6 per cent a year

— In the fastest-growing countries, such as India, passenger numbers grew by 30 per cent last year

— Air India has begun to recruit from the Indian Air Force to help to make up a pilot shortfall

— Suggested remedies include increasing the retirement age for commercial pilots to 65

Source: IATA

[2milefinal]

With the price of fuel doing nothing put going UP. I having feeling this so called aviation personal shortage will not last very much longer. imho

[Chuck Ellsworth]

In the mean time school after school close in Ontario or cease comercial training thanks to the cash grab by Queens Park and the morons in the Ontario Ministry of Colleges ;aided by TC flight training and Mr. Cannon ,who simply have done nothing to preserve their federal mandate, way to go Jim Dow, you are now presiding over the destruction of what untill recently an industry with a world wide reputation, but it wont affect your indexed pension Im sure!

And that Clunkdriver is the reason these creatures can rise into positions of power and sodomize everyone in the industry they control.

As Canada slips deeper into the third world government mentality do you think you and I will live long enough to see the over throw of these morons like one sees in other banana republics south of us?