Aviation case studies

Commercial crews are subject to maximum daily Flight Duty Periods (FDP) to prevent fatigue. However, sometimes unforeseen circumstances may cause a delay to a flight that can require crews to exceed these maximums by a small amount to complete the flight. Only the aircraft Captain can authorise such extensions to FDP, which is called ‘Commander’s Discretion’. 

We received many reports concerning alleged company pressure to apply Commander’s Discretion to resolve disrupted schedules following delays – the pressures of operations and rosters meant that the use of Commander’s Discretion appeared to be becoming more of a regular rather than exceptional event. We were in regular communication with the CAA about this and, partly based on that interaction, the CAA sent an open letter to all operators reflecting on the fact that “… the use of Commander’s Discretion (‘CD’) is being inconsistently interpreted by industry stakeholders, leading to inappropriate application (or the perception of inappropriate application) of CD.”  Within their note, they emphasised that “The operational consequences of the Commander considering it inappropriate to extend the crew duty period after the report, including the possibility of a night-stop down-route, has to be accepted and no commercial pressure can be applied at any stage.”

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Newly qualified First Officer (FO) pilots must fly with a Training Captain during the initial stages of their careers to be trained on company and aircraft-type procedures. The Training Captain provides the necessary supervision of the new pilots and ensures that they are competent in their role. The Training Captain must carefully plan each flight because they cannot rely on the trainee FO’s support. Effectively, the Training Captain covers the roles of Captain, FO and Trainer.  

We received a report from a Training Captain who commented that their company did not allow extra time for extra training activities. They were rostering Training Captains with back-to-back training flights that were more demanding than normal non-training flights.  As a result, they were concerned that Training Captains were at risk of becoming fatigued. In response to CHIRP raising the issue, the company said that although they had no evidence that fatigue had been a factor in any of their safety occurrences during a training flight, their Crew Training Team was working on simplifying the trainee report writing process, which can currently be quite time consuming for trainers. They also said that other actions to mitigate the risks such as potentially allowing more time for training flight preparation were being discussed and would be communicated to their trainer community once agreed.

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We received a report raising concerns about a runway surface with patches and bumps at an airport in the UK. The reporter said that the runway needed urgent repairs, and the safety concern was that the patches frequently broke up during normal operations resulting in immediate runway closure whilst emergency repairs were undertaken. As an occasional occurrence, this would be an inconvenience, but unplanned runway closures were experienced a few times a month and were becoming frequent. While local crews were routinely carrying extra fuel to allow them to hold off during repairs, non-local crews had to divert the flight for a closure. 

When we contacted the airport, they agreed that they had experienced some breakups over the summer period and the normal approach was to effect a temporary repair during the day (scheduled to minimise any disruption), followed by a permanent repair through the night.  They agreed to add the issue to their Local Runway Safety Team meetings which had representation from all parties who use the airport so that non-local crews would then be aware of the concern.

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Airline sickness/absence management policies are an area where there is a need for industry-wide protocols that reflect best practices regarding absence management. There is a legal requirement for crews not to fly when unfit to do so and companies must honour the fact that some more routine ailments for those on the ground (such as colds) can affect those who fly in a fundamentally different way due to physiological aeromedical issues.  As a result, crews are perhaps more prone to declaring sickness than their ground-based contemporaries, but many companies have onerous pay policies in respect of sickness whereby they remove basic pay at an early stage of sickness and revert to only the paltry Statutory Sickness Pay. Furthermore, while no doubt intending to be clear in their processes, some companies’ policies and communications to those who suffer repetitive sickness (such as multiple colds for example) can be perceived as intimidating and discourage those who are sick from removing themselves from duties; this puts them at risk of medical complications and contravenes their duty not to operate if unfit to do so.  

We engaged with the CAA on this matter. We were encouraged to hear that there are ongoing debates within the UK industry Flight Operations Liaison Group (FOLG) ‘Well-being’ and ‘Fatigue’ forums to review best practices. They will also consider if it is possible to construct common fundamental principles, policies and protocols as a pragmatic approach to sickness/absence that recognises the unique situation that aviators are in. Furthermore, it also ensures that long-term or repetitive sufferers can receive appropriate attention and medical care as necessary, and remove the fear or stigma that might be attached to reporting sick on multiple occasions.

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