Love-hate relationship between airline management and pilot unions

by Capt. G.A. Fernando
RCyAF/ SLAF, Air Ceylon, Air Lanka, Singapore Airlines, SriLankan Airlines
Former Crew Resource Management (CRM) Facilitator for SIA.
Member Air Accident Investigator Pool

Airline pilots are at the operating end of all decisions, be they policy or practice-related, made by managers of an airline’s various departments. From the ‘pointy’ end of an aircraft, only pilots see the performance of their airline at its best or worst. Furthermore, they see how other airlines solve problems under similar circumstances, and are able to observe those carriers’ ‘best practices’ at work.

Ideally, feedback from pilots to management must be an essential requisite for an airline’s progress, while balancing safety, schedule fidelity, and profitability. That is ‘Productivity with Protection’, as declared by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). Now there is also emphasis on Security.

Yet many pilots in this country say that they are treated like mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed ‘bovine excreta’. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a mechanism to improve this loss of communication. Administration should be by participation; not by suppression.

Culture

Culture is glibly explained as “the way we do things around here”. Every organisation has its own culture. Naturally, this applies to SriLankan Airlines, too. Over the past 44 years, through its earlier Air Lanka incarnation too, SriLankan has evolved into and ‘grown’ its own unique organisational culture.

According to the ICAO Safety Management Manual, organisational culture has the potential to affect the following:

a)     Interactions between senior and junior members of a group

b)    Interactions between industry and regulatory authority personnel

c)     The degree to which information is shared internally and with the regulatory authorities

d)    The prevalence of teamwork in the regulatory authority or industry organisation

e)     Reactions of personnel under demanding operational conditions

f)      The acceptance and utilisation of particular technologies

g)      The tendency to take punitive measures in reaction to operational errors within a product or service provider or by the regulatory authorities.

Organisational culture is also affected by factors such as:

a)     Business policies and procedures

b)    Supervisory behaviour and practices

c)     Safety improvement goals as well as minimum tolerance levels of management’s attitude toward quality or safety issues

d)    Employee training and motivation

e)     The relationship between the regulatory authorities and product and service providers

f)      Policies on work/life balance

As can be seen, these factors cover all aspects of airline pilots’ working lives. This ICAO document goes on to state further that the method in which administration deals with day-to-day safety issues is also central to improving organisational culture. Collective interaction between front-line personnel and their colleagues in matters of safety and quality, as well as with agents of the regulatory authority, is indicative of a positive managerial culture. This relationship should be characterised by professional courtesy, while maintaining respective roles as necessary to ensure impartiality or accountability.

This statement from the same manual sums it up succinctly: “A healthy safety culture relies on a high degree of trust and respect between personnel and management and must therefore be created and supported at the senior management level.”

Reality

Unfortunately, in reality there is a widespread feeling of ‘us’ and ‘them’, especially when times are hard and the ‘going gets tough’. When debt-servicing is high and eats into operational profit, the management (at higher and lower levels) chooses not to listen to those operatives in the front line, who have been working ‘red-eyed’ for many hours, to the best of their ability at day and night, in good weather and bad, and have ‘seen it all’.

It cannot be overemphasised that, where airline pilots are concerned, one small mistake, of either omission or commission, could mean a major catastrophe for which they would be held accountable by management who themselves have lost millions for the airline through bad decisions, yet remain exempt from retribution. This results in animosity and mistrust between the airborne and the chair-borne, the latter being those who work, arguably, 9-to-5 hours while wallowing in the belief that they are the prime movers-and-shakers of the aviation world in the eyes of the general public.

The Ceylon (Hatton)-born ‘father’ of Human Factors in Aircraft Accidents, Capt. David Beaty, said that when there is an accident or a serious incident, “Management is part of the establishment. Even small bits of establishment stick together, and there is a political and economic necessity not to rock the boat, nor lower the management status in their own eyes and those of other people.”

Managements will blame the pilots as it is more convenient, and will be relatively litigation-free and, most of all, self-satisfying (Prof. James Reason; former Professor of Psychology at the University of Manchester). This is exactly why air safety experts are worried about ‘signs of the times’. After an accident or incident, the investigator has to rely on the help of the pilots involved to reconstruct the chain of events that led to the event. If pilots are now deemed to be legally liable, they are unlikely to provide the investigator with a full and accurate account of events. As someone put it, it is a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t scenario.”

The Pilots’ Association in Sri Lanka has already put up its defences. They recommend to their membership to declare, after an accident or incident: “Before making a report or statement of any kind, I wish to exercise my right to consult with my Association representative and/or attorney”. (This instruction is printed on the back of the ALPGSL Membership Card.)

An airline pilot, manager, or worker?

Gerrard, the holder of Flight Engineer Licence No. 1 in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), also held the managerial post of Chief Flight Engineer while he was President of the Flight Engineers’ Association. He always insisted that as the aims and objectives of both organisations are, or should be, the same, it was possible to serve them equitably. In fact, when the Ceylon Air Line Pilots’ Association (CALPA) was formed in 1954, Capt. Peter Fernando, the Manager-Operations of Air Ceylon, was elected as its President.

Subsequently, though, it didn’t seem practical as there could be, and were, conflicts of interest. So, is an airline pilot a manager or a ‘worker’? It seemed that they were neither fish nor fowl, in a category of their own. At any given point in time a large portion of company assets are under their charge. Although earning high salaries, they still have to resort to trade union activity, for their voices to be heard. The sad truth is that all over the world the management types seem to hate arrogant confidence (guts?) exhibited by airline pilots, who are consequently and frequently labelled ‘trouble makers’. Often, management and pilots are working on two different ‘frequencies’. When a pilot is ‘loaned’ to management he ceases to be an active member of the Pilots’ Guild until his managerial tenure is over. Only then could he re-join the ‘EXCO’ (executive committee) after a prescribed cooling-off period.

Those brave pilots who go on to serve in operations management are in the minority of the cohort of other managers, and are usually out-voted at management meetings. Later, they are expected to ‘translate’ top management decisions into ‘pilot-speak’ so as to obtain commitment from their flying colleagues.

A possible solution

A possible solution to the problem is a process of continuous feedback directly from the front line to higher management through the Airline Pilots’ Guild, thus completing the ‘loop’. Higher management should attempt to ‘change frequencies and listen without bias to “the unknown, unheralded airline pilots who fly without incident or accident, making decisions, stopping potential disasters before they happened, flying all night to see through scratchy, tired eyes; fighting bad weather in all seasons from ice to thunderstorms; away from home and family for at least half of every month. You see him, and now her, walking through the airline terminals wheeling their black brain bags and overnight cases, unnoticed except for their uniform.” (Capt. Robert N. Buck; former Chief Pilot of TWA)