PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY FOR A SAFE AND FAIR EUROPEAN AVIATION
1. Safe Legislation
Today already, a combination of economic pressure and an aviation system that grows in traffic and in complexity is pushing the airlines to cut costs, reduce safety margins and push the regulations to their limits. Airlines flying strictly to what the law says is safe are no longer an exception. In 2012, several emergency landings due to low fuel and bad weather conditions, illustrated that only complying with the minimum safety standards might be enough for the unthinkable to happen. And laws – when they exist – are often a near-image of an industry wish list. They are often based on biased data, and false assumptions that the market will regulate itself or that the legislator will at a later stage correct any deficiencies. Even if the laws are adequately drafted, their scope is often limited, while equally important issues, such as company or safety culture, incident reporting or data handling remain beneath the regulatory surface. Crucially, laws are not only for the regulators to adopt but also for the industry to comply with. Yet, Europe’s aviation safety authorities are struggling to oversee operations in an increasingly complex environment – e.g. airlines based in one country, hiring crews from a second one and planes from a third one. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) plays an important role, but its existence has often been used to justify shrinking resources of national aviation authorities while they do remain essential for regulatory oversight. EASA itself is victim of cost cutting while its responsibilities are extending. As a result, Europe could soon face the emergence of de facto under-regulated and insufficiently overseen operators and countries. These trends can only be countered by strengthening the EU’s air safety legislation in the first place, and by providing effective safety oversight (by skilled safety inspectors) and by a well-resourced EASA. The EU must set high safety standards, enforce them and act decisively to ensure the safety of Europe’s passengers.
What can be done!
- Strengthen EU air safety legislation to guarantee passenger safety.
- Fix broken safety oversight at national and European level.
- Strengthen EU’s Aviation Safety Agency EASA.
2. Fair Competition
Safe, comfortable and affordable air travel is a common desire of passengers and crews alike. This is why having airlines to compete freely with each other, based on the best product, quality service and price is a welcome and necessary precondition for aviation. But to grow, connect people and create jobs, Europe’s airlines should compete on a level playing field with a common set of rules. However, this competition is on the point of turning into a ‘race to the bottom’. Airlines are increasingly seeking unfair advantage through market-distorting business practices,such as social dumping and “forum shopping” to benefit from light regulation and favorable taxation in countries that serve them as ‘flag of convenience’. This, in turn, puts pressure on other companies to use similar practices to safeguard their market share. This situation is exacerbated by ‘booming’ airlines from the Gulf region – such as Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad – expanding their capacity on many of the routes previously serviced by European carriers. The problem is that many of these airlines are (partly) state-owned, supported by state aid, benefiting from access to cheap (airport) infrastructure, fuel and capital. In addition, they are not subject to night-curfews at airports (noise restrictions), ticket taxes and environmental charges as their European competitors. This distorts the ‘level playing field’ even further. In Europe, a new industry trend to distort competition is emerging: complex, in-transparent “innovative” business models and contractual set-ups. This includes: airlines arbitrarily relocating their business (i.e. their operating license and Air Operator Certificate) to ‘flags of convenience’ countries. The aim is to avoid tax and social security contributions for their employees, and/or to benefit from lax safety oversight by the authorities that offer their ‘flag’; airlines using flexible contractual set-ups that are often at the edge of what is legal and what is necessary to guarantee flight safety. These set-ups force employees into temporary contract relationships, fake self-employment (e.g. requiring air crew to set up their own limited liability company that offers its services though agencies to the airline), and/or making use of fake work bases in non-European countries, and ‘pay to fly’ (P2F) schemes (whereby newly graduated pilots have to pay their airline for gaining flying experience on an aircraft). At the same time, certain airlines are seeking direct or indirect subsidies from airports (e.g. lower airport changes), from local authorities (e.g. a fixed euro amount per passenger transported to their region) and/or from national government bodies (e.g. Gulf country governments helping their carriers to gain international market share). This allows them to unfairly cross-subsidise their operations and ticket prices – to the detriment of their non-subsidised competitors. Europe must safeguard the principles of fair competition, before ‘honest players’ are pushed out of the market and governments lose control.
What can be done!
- Promote fair competition by stopping abusive business models, social dumping, subsidy-hunting, and regulatory ‘forum shopping’;
- Eradicate fake self-employment by certain airline operators;
- Ensure a competitive level playing field with 3rd country airlines.
3. Better Pilot Training
The pressure to cut costs is not sparing pilot training: training standards are watered down with reduced flying hours, greater reliance on simulators and aircraft automation, and new types of licenses which will ultimately lead to a reduction of piloting skills. Safety is at stake! Commercial pressure has brought into life new “creative” types of pilot licenses or qualifications. For example the “Multi-crew Pilot License” and the “Cruise-relief co-pilot”, which both reduce the training standards and provide for less training hours. The Multi-crew Pilot License (MPL) is designed to prepare candidate pilots to fly solely as part of a larger crew. But it does not prepare them to ever be in command of an aircraft. The Cruise-relief co-pilot qualification does not allow the co-pilots to take-off and land an aircraft. They can only fly above a certain altitude on autopilot – never touching the controls! Such “auto-pilot licenses” are insufficient to provide pilots with adequate knowledge, skills and judgement to successfully manage their flights independently and safely even under non-routine conditions. What is needed is the opposite: more safety through better training and true airmanship.
Cost cutting also means that future pilots will be trained with less flying hours in real aircraft, negligible solo flying, and less exposure to a real flying environment. This reduction of time allocated to training manual flying skills is often justified with the increasing automation of aircraft. Yet, reality is that the ever increasing automation goes hand in hand with less knowledge on how to handle these highly automated systems. Automation is so present and so often used that the pilot’s manual flying skills are degrading. This is not in the interest of safety. When the automation fails, it is the pilot who has to have the flying skills to bring down the plane safety. Fact is that pilots regularly face challenging situations in the air, such as technical faults in one of the plane’s 4 million parts, or landing at night in heavy cross-winds. These are moments that call for fully alert, skilled and well-trained pilots, able to take safety decisions within seconds. Lowering training standards – while human error is a significant factor in many fatal accidents – is fundamentally wrong and must be stopped.
What can be done!
- Ensure EU pilot training standards are no longer watered down, but improved.
- Support legislation that guarantees that pilots are fully trained to ensure a safe flight even in the most challenging circumstances.
- Put more emphasis on (re)building the pilots’ fundamental flying skills.
Summary
- Strengthen EU air safety legislation to guarantee passenger safety.
- Fix broken safety oversight at national and European level.
- Strengthen EU’s Aviation Safety Agency EASA.
- Promote fair competition by stopping abusive business models, social dumping, subsidy-hunting, and regulatory ‘forum shopping;
- Eradicate fake self-employment by certain airline operators
- Ensure a competitive level playing field with 3rd country airlines.
- Ensure EU pilot training standards are no longer watered down, but improved.
- Support legislation that guarantees that pilots are fully trained to ensure a safe flight even in the most challenging circumstances.
- Put more emphasis on (re)building the pilots’ fundamental flying skills
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