THE CRASH OF A SMALL commuter airliner near Raleigh-Durham airport in the USA in 1994 has triggered one of the most important airline-safety debates ever. This is not over the safety of the Jetstream 31 (exonerated), or even over the abilities of the crew (blamed) - but over whether or not airlines should be able to pass on to subsequent employees reservations which they have about those abilities. It is a debate fraught with danger for pilots and airlines alike, but it will almost certainly have to be resolved in favour of disclosure - if only for the sake of the third (and most important) party, the travelling public.
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has decided to investigate the issue of access to pilots' employment histories, because of the bearing such a history had on this case. The pilot in question had resigned to avoid dismissal by his previous employer before being hired by the airline whose aircraft was to crash. This is not the first time that a pilot's record of inadequacy has come to light only as a result of an accident.
An airline is right to show loyalty to its employees, but there must be a point at which the interests of all parties are best served by admitting the unpalatable truth that the employee may not be up to his or her job. That is easy to say, but hard to implement. The difficulty lies not in saying that "...this employee is not good enough", but in the legal and moral ramifications of making that statement.
In whose judgement is the employee inadequate? That of a fully qualified, impartial, supervisor or training captain? That of a fellow employee with whom the employee in question has personal difficulties? Perhaps that of a captain whose possibly overbearing presence in the cockpit has caused a competent, but non-forceful, first officer to make uncharacteristic mistakes?
Is inadequacy in performance at one job necessarily an indication of inadequacy at all others? Air forces routinely stream their cadet officers into those who can handle fast jets and those who cannot. The best of those who fail the fighter selection go on to be heavy-transport pilots. Far from being failures, they are the very sort of military pilot most likely subsequently to find a job with an airline.
What pilot, especially in the notoriously litigious USA, is going to undermine his career (and bank account) by publicly blighting the career of another? Certainly, in the country which invented the Freedom of Information Act, what is written about a pilot's performance will be circulated sufficiently far for it to be actionable, even if it goes no further than from one employer to the next.
Despite those apparently insurmountable difficulties, a way must be found for potentially life-saving information (for pilots and passengers alike) to be exchanged where necessary between employers without the fear of legal backlash.
The most impartial way might be for the results of all check-rides and evaluations to be filed with the independent national licensing body. The fact that such a record was to be filed permanently might curb any tendency among check pilots either to over- or under-criticise their subjects. The pilot, of course, would have to have the right to see what was on the record, and to add his/her comments on it, to give, perhaps, a more balanced view. A prospective employer could then (with suitable controls) have access to a continuous record of a pilot's performance and employment history.
There are dangers even in this, however. Such a record would have to be used judiciously as a backstop in case of doubt, not as the primary means of selecting or rejecting pilots. National regulators would have to be convinced of the need to maintain far more comprehensive pilot records than they do now, and to bear the cost (not easy when governments worldwide are trying to privatise most of the functions of their regulatory bodies).
What is certain, however, is that the aviation community must find a way of ensuring that, if there is a pilot out there of whom it can be said "...everyone knows he's an accident waiting to happen", those who need to know it, do.
Source: Flight International