Teamsters Airline Division Week in Review
DOT Inspector General Reports on FAA "Call to Action Plan"
This Thursday, Teamsters Airline Division Director Captain David Bourne attended the House Aviation Subcommittee hearing on the FAA's sweeping "Call to Action Plan" that was instituted last year as a result of the Colgan 3407 crash that claimed 51 lives in
Also attending the hearing with Captain Bourne was CAPA Vice President Jeff Skiles and representatives of APA and USAPA. After the hearing concluded, Captain Bourne met with many of the family members who voiced their concerns to him about the need for urgency in making the necessary regulatory changes to prevent another tragedy. At the conclusion of their meeting, he invited them to meet with him next week and offered the support of the Teamsters to ensure that their voices continue to be heard and that the rulemaking process brings about the changes needed to improve the safety of crewmembers and the travelling public.
In commenting about the hearing Captain Bourne said, "for too long, the regulatory process has brought about change as a result of tragedy and loss of life. The NTSB findings released this week on the crash clearly demonstrate a need for long overdue changes in many parts of the industry." He went on to say, "These families of the those who perished bear the painful daily burden of a personal loss that should never have happened. We must make sure it does not happen again. Safety should never be considered a cost of doing business; it must be considered a necessary investment that yields dividends."
UAL Negotiations Move to SFO
UAL negotiations resumed this week in
The parties have agreed to take a recess during the week of February 8th and reconvene on February 16th in
Week in Review News Items
Labor Developments
American Airlines has told the FAA that it may train management employees to replace flight attendants in case of a strike. American said Tuesday that such contingency planning is normal in the airline industry during contract talks. "We are committed to the mediation process, and our top objective remains reaching an agreement with the APFA on a contract for our flight attendants," American spokeswoman Missy Latham said. And United is to go to the High Court today over changes brought in by British Airways to cabin crew last year.
Even before the plane took off, a critical error had been made. Because the captain and first officer of the Colgan Air turboprop had entered contradictory information into cockpit computer systems, a false alarm was later triggered, startling the captain into yanking a control the wrong way and leading to a crash outside Buffalo that killed 50 people last Feb. 12–during the past six years, millions of passengers have been on at least 65,000 U.S. airline flights that shouldn't have taken off because planes weren't properly maintained, a six-month USA TODAY investigation has found–but DOT Secretary Ray LaHood came out swinging against the USA TODAY report that alleged that 65,000 airline flights over the last six years occurred in aircraft that were not properly maintained–and federal investigators blamed a chain of cockpit mistakes for the fatal crash of a commuter airline near Buffalo, N.Y., last February. But pilots, safety experts and company officials disagree over how much commuter carrier Colgan Air Inc. has since done to combat the key issue of pilot fatigue.
Airline Industry Finances & Structure
A simple question on the lessons learned from the downturn, posed during last week's Continental analyst call, resulted in the clearest indication yet of the structural changes now under way at US carriers. They go far beyond capacity, revealing the task ahead for legacy airlines. It also reveals the implications for manufacturers, regionals and organized labor, as low cost airlines also restrain expansion–the global economy may be climbing out of recession but the air transport industry does not expect any significant pick up in orders this year, executives said on Wednesday. "Cautious optimism" is the dominant phrase at the Singapore Airshow this week, the first major industry event of the year after a wretched 2009, when aircraft orders at both Boeing and Airbus were the worst in 15 years.
Last year Southwest Airlines' revenue shrank for the first time ever. Now it's CEO says it could rebound with record revenue in 2010–a massive cost-cutting campaign at British Airways helped to lift the struggling carrier to its first quarterly operating profit in more than a year. But the airline said Friday that it still expected to record an annual loss amid a broad industry slump–Singapore Airlines, one of the world's biggest carriers by market value, on Tuesday reported its best quarterly profit in almost two years as cargo volumes rebounded and travel improved.
Miscellaneous
Body scanners that look under airline passengers' clothing for hidden weapons could be in nearly half the nation's airport checkpoints by late 2011, according to an Obama administration plan announced Monday–and UK air passengers who refuse to submit to controversial full body scans will be barred from boarding their flights.