Your Flight Safety Concerns

[Brown Bear]

Someone brought up problems with communicating their concerns regarding flying overweight, etc with their captains. Some companies will weed you out as a ramp slave with that attitude!!

[larrythepilot]

When something like this gets going I am sceptical because someone, somewhere always has a personal agenda.

I could not agree with you more. And that personal agenda usually involves money. I know many people are behind this idea thinking it will improve safety. I hope those with the personal agenda don’t take advantage of these people to further their cause.

Another concern I have is, how will they determine who qualifies for this College of Aviation Professionals? Will it be pilots who went to flight school A qualify... while those pilots who went to flight school B are out of luck? If so, how will they decide which flight schools produce safer graduates?

...I know this has been addressed before, and I also apologize for getting off topic, but in my humble opinion this does relate to flight safety.

[ScudRunner]

Can't believe I just found this thread.

Anyway I have written in the past about the elimination of NDB circling approaches, and further to that elimination of the NDB all together, The simple fact is GPS Aproaches are just that much safer. With WAAS tech combined with CDA approaches, eliminating the dive N drive to MDA style approaches and replacing it with a simple DH on an approach is a simple solution.

Technology is the solution, just think of the advances in the past few years with EFIS/ GPS / TCAS is astonishing, humans are visual creatures the old tech of the past where you have to interpret what is going on with a good scan are slowly being replaced with the modern EFIS displays where at a glance you know where you are. Mandating scheduled air service to have this technology with TCAS could be a solution to modernizing cockpits. 705 Airlines have this on board but think of all the 703/704 operations that do not.

Weather reporting, a GFA is a great thing but how many scheduled Air taxi's operate into airports where "Jimmy" looking out the window is your source of weather before departure. Jimmy is usually pretty reliable but in some parts a simple private weather station with a web cam available on the web is a heck of a lot better. How many approaches have in the top left corner "use YXZ altimeter add 200 ft to all altitude". Not a huge issue but if an airport has a scheduled service perhaps a METAR should be present.

Duty Day issues are a no brainer, something to consider is if a pilot begins flying after/before a certain hour more restrictive duty hours should come into place. How many of us have started late in the evening say 9 o'clock but have been up since the morning then fly all night. Having flown night cargo I know its pretty difficult to shift ones circadian rhythm. I'm sure there have been studies by smarter people about this sort of thing, studies would be a good template to use as a guide in making these duty hours more restrictive.

I'll save this one for last as I know it will ruffle a few feathers.

Commercial Single Engine Piston IFR, make it legal.

Slow down breath and hear me out, how many of us have been guilty of Scudrunning along in shit weather usually in a 206 or similar following a road. Getting caught out with weather coming in isn't fun and with the above paragraph about weather reporting wich is sparse in some areas would it not be wiser to be up above in the sun and shoot an approach with IFR reserve fuel instead of 30 mins of VFR juice in your tank. A 206 hauling drums up north into bush strips this isn't practical at all and would limit useful load nor would it be useful to the float drivers. Now I know people on here shit their pants when a PC-12 departs and according to them they are falling out of the sky at an alarming rate making Pilatus millions in new orders.

I believe that sitting high above the clouds in a well equipped piston is far safer than flying low down VFR. Trust me I know, now to appease the nay sayers who probably have half a page response written without reading past the first line, this approval could only go to aircraft equipped with a ballistic chute or synthetic vision (aint technology great).

..

[goldeneagle]

Night circling approaches - let us rid ourselves of them. They can even get pretty hairy under two crew, and I would never consider doing one single pilot.

ok, so, it's 1200 overcast, visibility 10 miles underneath, winds from the southeast at 25 knots. Just a typical winter day on the west coast, and you are headed into boundary bay. The circling approach is meant to put you in a position to join the circuit for a runway that's not lined up with the approach. I'm curious why you would consider the strait in to be 'not scary', but, executing the approach, arriving under the clouds in the dark, then joining the circuit for a runway that's actually into wind, 'scary' ?

I wouldn't consider the strait in single pilot in those conditions, but, circling for the runway into wind, that's pretty much a no brainer.

Take the same evening, and instead of boundary bay, go into abbotsford. Same shit, different stick. Again, the published approach can indeed take you strait into a pretty hairy landing with that 25 knot crosswind, but, circle for what will undoubtedly be the active runway, a procedure that starts at the bottom of the approach and consists of 'strait ahead onto the crosswind leg, turn downwind into the circuit' seems pretty strait forward to me.

I guess I'm just to much of an old-timer, I dont see why it's so darn hard to fly a circuit at night at the bottom of an approach after busting outa the clouds. We teach ppl students to do circuits at nite, it's a pretty basic thing in the arsenal of stuff a pilot should be capable of. Why are you folks all terrified of doing a circling procedure at night, when, in the vast majority of cases, a circling approach means 'fly the approach to clear cloud, then join the circuit for the runway in use?'

There's lots of airports that have ONLY circling approaches, because of this little thing called 'cumulus granite' in the vicinity. The only clear path for an approach is not lined up with the runway, or, for other reasons, ends up around 1000 feet above the airport. The old ndb into 108 mile was a perfect example, full procedure ndb approach that ends you up at 1000 feet overhead the field. There was no 'strait in', and every approach was circling, it's essentially an 'approach to allow you to join the circuit'. Perfectly good airport, with lights, lots of mostly flat ground in the vicinity, I just cant see what's dangerous and scary about doing a circling approach into there.

But, you are right about one thing. If joining the circuit for 12 at zbb during the dark of night with a southeaster blowing,after being vectored in to the VOR strait in approach is to scary, you certainly do not belong in a single pilot airplane, and, I sure dont want you in the right seat beside me either.

[AEROBAT]

Why are you folks all terrified of doing a circling procedure at night, when, in the vast majority of cases, a circling approach means 'fly the approach to clear cloud, then join the circuit for the runway in use?'
[/quote]

It seems that Canadian pilots have a very negative and are terrified of lot of things lately, at least on avcanada. People talk about how "dangerous" single engine night VFR is supposed to be and single pilot IFR is apparently suicidal all of a sudden. If mother Transport feels a private pilot, with the right qualifications and plane, is OK to fly IFR single pilot I can't see how it is a death wish scenario.

[MUSICMAAN]

I would have to say that in the biggest concern I have for aviation currently would be the issue, if we can call it an "issue", of (performance based pay) for pilots.

For anyone not aware of what performance base pay is, it could be a few things, pilots paid by the hour, by the trip, or my all time favorite.. pilots paid by miles flown. Given, there usually is a base pay, plus mileage, or whatever the system is the company is using, but still is a system that pilots are paid for there performance.... performance that usually is not controlled by the pilot him/herself. Weather, maintenance issues with the aircraft, and personal problems with dispatchers are a few of these "uncontrollable" instances.

For my little safety rant, I'll focus on the "mileage based pay", cuz that is what I'm most familiar with.

Let's take common situation here on the coast.. or up North.

Here's a pilot working for a company, he get's a base salary (which isn't much) and let's say, 25 cents per mile. A weather system comes in and it's too shitty to fly. So he sits on it for a day... "bummer". Day two arrives, still shatty, better not go...."this sucks" Day three comes along, still shitty out, but the paycheck is really starting to suffer, oh well, gotta put food on the table, let's go flyin'. This is all to common!

In an area with frequent bad weather, pilots who are on a mileage based pay system are for the most part "forced" to fly in weather they probably shouldn't, trying to make a living. And then there are the "hero" pilots who do it to feel good about themselves.

But what about the rest of the company?? Does the maintenance department get paid by how many turns of the wrench they crank? And dispatch, do they get paid by how many planes they release? And management.. do they get paid more or less by how much "managing" they have to do?? Don't think so. If they're on salary, same ol' paycheck every month. And if they are paid hourly, weather and other issues won't hurt their bottom line.

These pilots are being asked to carry the company by taking what could be considered a "pay cut", for something they have no control over... either that, or get out there and fly.

Some companies at least will pay some mileage for the trip, even if the pilot had to turn around due to unforeseen circumstance . But there are still companies that won't pay a single mile unless the trip was completed. WTF??

In my opinion, and I stress this is just "my opinion" , maybe some accidents, some recently here on the West Coast, could have been avoided, had the pilots not been on a mileage based pay system.

Pilots not only have there own lives in there hands, but the lives of everyone else in the plane. Obviously reducing the stress level in the cockpit should be a main safety priority for any company and there crew members. Pilots pushing weather to get a paycheck, I would consider to be a huge safety concern!

I speak from experience, I flew for a few companies on a mileage system, and I can honestly say, it was very stressful, especially in the winter months, not knowing if the bills were going to get paid. I will also say, that I will never again fly under such a system, and I will never pay any of my pilots using performance based pay.

I heard a rumor a few years back that Transport Canada was going to look in to the issue of performance base pay systems. Maybe it was just a rumor, but I sincerely hope that some day soon, they do.


MM

[ScudRunner]

why bother having to do all that when you can just do a nice and simple RNAV approach perfectly aligned for the runway into the wind. why do we settle for this crap in Canada its not sketchy or spooky invest in safety if stats prove that night circling approaches are the most likely to result in accidents simple solution a nice easy straight in RNAV.

[glorifiedtaxidriver]

I will x2 the performance based pay system. Sheer stupidity and an easy one to fix.

[x-wind]

[quote="seniorpumpkin"]VFR pilots and planes flying through clouds- just because you have an artificial horizon and it's a wee puff of cloud doesn't make it safe
infrequent training- I think it should be mandated that we spend 30 minutes EVERY month reviewing emergency checklist items, I honestly think that's all it would take
Lack of safety training for management teams- sometimes they get so caught up in making money, they all forget that LIVES are on the line!
Lack of money in aviation- this leads to cutting corners in every aspect of the operation and leads to plenty of unsafe decisions[/quote]

Some good points there.

I do not agree with restricting non-precision circling approaches. However, I respect someone who can say no.

I think pilot training test standards are incredibly low.

I'm in agreement with progressing towards much more RNAV (GNSS) accessibility.