Confidential Human Factors
Incident Reporting Programme
The Charity
Aviation
Maritime
CC6132
Initial Report
Many times before my briefing I have several notices to read and acknowledge, this is before I report for my duty. We are allocated 10 minutes to “read these notices”. Last week I had a 7 notices, including two videos which combined took nearly 30 minutes just for the videos.
I had to do all these notices on my day off and I nearly always have to do these notices in my own time. The 10 minutes which we are given isn’t sufficient.
Pre device times, we used to have a note book, which we would quickly check before our briefing. These notices were easier and quicker to read. There were less notices too. The number of notices we get now have shot up in comparison. I believe the company should put more time aside, especially when we get notices which will clearly take over 10 minutes to read pre briefing.
Company Comment
The issue of Notices has been raised previously with Cabin Management who advised that non-safety Notices were in the process of being stripped out to ensure only Safety-related SEP notices requiring confirmation of read/receipt are issued, this appears to be a work in progress. The CAA are also on the distribution list of every Cabin Notice that is issued and are aware of these, including quantity issued and time required to read/acknowledge them.
The introduction of a new aircraft type identified some significant differences and, as a duty of care, we filmed a manual handling video to assist crew to adopt the tasks required (including CPR in the seat) and to avoid injury to our cabin crew. Unfortunately, Safety were not given much time to visit the aircraft and create and issue the video. The Union H&S Reps were made aware of this, as were Cabin Management.
CAA Comment
Crew notices are expected to be read; this is sometimes pre-flight. The crew members would usually be able to read these notices on standby or during a duty period. If this was becoming more burdensome on the crew, we would have to have a look at the operator’s practices more closely.
CHIRP Comment
This operator allocates 10 minutes prior to a duty for their crew to read their notices, many operator’s do not allocate any specific time. As with many roles there is an element of keeping one’s self up to date with changing policies and procedures, especially when they are safety critical.
UK (EU) Reg No 965/2012 (Air Ops) – CAT.GEN.MPA.100 Crew responsibilities
(a) The crew member shall be responsible for the proper execution of his or her duties that are:
(1) related to the safety of the aircraft and its occupants; and
(2) specified in the instructions and procedures in the operations manual.
There are some notices that require attention prior to a flight, there are others that can be read at leisure – this will depend on your operator’s procedures. From a safety standpoint it is best not to dilute safety-related notices with service-related notices; some operator’s use a coding system, such as red/amber/green, to make the cabin crew aware of the significance of each notice.