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In early August, our friends at the European Cockpit Association announced their wholehearted support for a new ‘Practical Guide’ issued by EASA on ‘Management of hazards related to new business models of commercial air transport operators’. This should come as no surprise, given that the chair of the working group that drew up these recommendations just happens also to be the ECA Technical Affairs Director. There has been, however, one small problem. After trumpeting the new guide, and how very sound it was, it has now been withdrawn.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is now no trace of the ECA press release on the ECA website. There is however a note saying that “the Practical Guide has been retracted by EASA from its website as it was published by mistake on 7 Aug, ‘before completion of the final internal validation steps’. Upon request by the Agency, ECA has removed the content of its press release issued on 8 Aug as well as the links to the Practical Guide.” Luckily, at Aviation Advocacy we closely monitor EASA publications and have retained copies of both the Practical Guide as inadvertently distributed and ECA’s press release.
According to its first iteration, EASA was tasked by its Member States to identify hazards and access risks stemming from the development of these new business models and to develop possible mitigation measures. You may recall the Dutch Presidency of the Union conceding to the squeakiest wheel of all that this should be reviewed. To do this, EASA set up a Working Group on New Business Models.
There is an interesting side question as to why, how and under what conditions such a task falls within EASA’s remit? The issue for EASA is not the nature of the operations; it is the safety of the operations. Instead, this study, completely politically motivated, was commissioned to address the issues that the hard ECA lobbying on ‘asymmetric contracts’ had demanded. This is part of their ‘Social Dumping’ campaign. It is mind-blowing that funds were devoted to this industrial strength putting of the cart before the horse.
Make no mistake. ‘New Business Models’ is a euphemism for ‘low cost carriers’. According to ECA’s press release, the Working Group was chaired by Johan Glanz, ECA Board Director. To be fair, it also included representatives from Ryanair, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Aer Lingus and Luxair. That might explain why the pre-release draft of the practical guide was somewhat nebulous. For the most part, in fact, the guide focused on possible potential dangers of outsourcing, and like most high-level policy documents, could be interpreted to mean just about anything. That is its strength.
Still, getting ahead of the release of this document is not a good look, particularly from the chair of the working group. What might possibly have motivated this?
The ECA is never afraid to resolve all ambiguities in favour of itself, nor is it shy about attempting to dictate the agenda concerning issues it gets its teeth into. Perhaps it wanted to get ahead of the curve and dictate the tone of the discussion about the guide when it was released? If we compare the ECA press release with the practical guide, that certainly seems to be the case.
For instance, the ECA press release suggests that new business models’ “high focus on cost cutting…according to EASA puts human factors, crew resource management and safety management under intense pressure”. Wow, if a working group that includes LCCs is saying that, this is dynamite. Except, of course, this notion is mentioned not once in EASA’s practical guide.
Likewise, the guide makes no claim that “crew atypical employment…can negatively impact safety”. Unlike the ECA press release. Instead, the guide notes that “Different employment models … might have a negative impact on the operator’s safety culture”. They may not too, but that point is not discussed at all.
One might wonder whether EASA has an agenda against atypical employment. Oh wait…They do. They have been on the warpath about this topic for years, with idiosyncratically interpreted surveys and other documents to light their way.
The business practices of the LCCs have upset many previously well-entrenched practices built up over many years by airlines and their staff. The general marching order under which those practices were built up was to avoid industrial action. It was a different time. Airlines were largely government owned and one concern was always a loss of face, followed by the loss of an election if the government airline disrupted too many summer holiday plans.
That meant that pilots were not then, and are not now, in the poorest paid employment category and the hours they work not the most demanding – although, yes, of course, they are safety professionals. No-one wants to be in an aircraft in an emergency with an exhausted pilot. But the current practices stop significantly short of allowing that to happen. Nor are moves to reduce feather-bedding likely to have an impact on that. Not that those that are being asked to change will concede those points.
Without question, many of the problems raised in the practical guide are worth addressing. However, they need to be addressed dispassionately. The taint of ECA influence on the practical guide is obvious. Amongst the references supporting the EASA document is an article that refers to ‘airline greed’ – an article that can also be found on the ECA website, incidentally. Ask yourself which group of working group members is likely to have included that?
Why the practical guide were retracted is unclear. Was it a roll-out SNAFU? A simple mistake, as is possible when dealing with bureaucracy? Likely, we will never know. In ECA’s now withdrawn press release, Glanz is quoted saying, “This new Guide is only a first step and more will be needed from EU institutions.” We look forward to the seeing the final version. Then we can all assess whether more is needed.
