British Pilots Warn Of Strike

Is it a labor tactic or a genuine concern over the amount of time European flight crews spend in the cockpit? If it's a true-blue safety issue, then British Airline Pilots Association General Secretary Jim McAuslin warns, "We will be writing to employers saying that airlines should brace themselves for cancelled flights as pilots will not adhere to the proposed limits if they feel they are at risk of fatigue and of jeopardizing passenger lives."

When the EU's Council of Transport Ministers meets in Luxembourg later this week, they'll consider extending the hours of flight crews throughout Europe. British pilots like BALPA chief Mervyn Granshaw warn, be ready for a storm of protests that could ground flights worldwide.

"What the European Commission is proposing is frankly unsafe and will put passenger lives at risk," said Granshaw.

In trying to create an EU standard for flight crew hours, the ministers meeting in Luxembourg will consider the highly controversial "Simpson Proposals." Named for British MEP Brian Simpson, who chaired the transport meetings last year, the proposals are the ire of commercial pilots in Europe. The transport ministers took them off the table, reworked them, and are set to consider them again when they meet Thursday and Friday.

But the BALPA has a plan. Granshaw and McAuslin want to present the ministers with a study of 55 commercial aircraft accidents over a ten-year period -- a study conducted by the FAA. The study shows pilots working more than ten hours in a single stretch are twice as likely to run into accidents as are pilots who've worked less than ten hours. When the pilot in question has worked 13 hours, he's six-times more prone to cause an accident that seriously damages the aircraft or hurts someone on board.

The Simpson proposals would stretch a pilot's working day to 14 hours. It would also cut the amount of rest time between such long shifts.

"The proposals originated in the European Parliament where we had the sorry spectacle of politicians trying to decide what hours should be flown and when," said McAuslin. "They came to a shoddy compromise which is unsafe, unsound, and impractical. The fact is that science has been shut out. The views of experts in the field were neither sought nor accepted when offered. There is a desire to have one European standard, and that is something that BALPA has been demanding for years, but what we are offered is a half baked set of proposals that will put passenger lives at risk. The public needs to be told."

Granshaw was singing from the same hymnbook Monday. "Under the European proposals it will be possible for an airline to tell two pilots to fly from London to Sydney with a brief stopover in Bangkok or Singapore instead of what we have now, a flight crew of four," he said. "Experience tells us that this will be a disaster."

FMI: www.balpa.org