Full Disclosure

Last week I celebrated two seemingly opposed events on the same day: winning the lottery and finalizing a divorce. The lottery win was of the airline type where I was able to retire with my retirement benefits intact and the divorce represents that, with the retirement funds safely in my account, all ties with my employer have been severed. So now I am able to come out of the shadows and finally divulge my airline affiliation which, until now, has been described as simply a legacy carrier. And maybe a bit of prognostication, too.

My airline lottery began with Air One, a post-deregulation carrier based in Saint Louis, in the spring of 1983. Eighteen months later the airline filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In February of ’85 I entered the lottery again as a new-hire with American Airlines. Many told me at the time that I was now home free. Based on my earlier experience (and that of my peers) I was loathe to take anything for granted and was heard to say that I’d let them know in about 27 years.

Well, here I am: a winner. Many of my contemporaries suffered through bankruptcies and mergers where their retirements were either decimated or lost entirely. Did they make a bad decision regarding their choice of employer? Generally not. Many once-solid companies found it impossible to survive in a deregulated airline industry where many newcomers were given a legislative leg-up. PanAm, Braniff, Eastern, and others are gone and most in that lottery lost out as a result. No, give me no credit. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.

I retired on September 1, but had to wait two months before the appropriate funds were transferred. I chose the option of taking a lump sum payment thus making it possible to cut any and all ties with the airline. Absent an annuity (or pension), should they experience a similar fate as many before them, my financial future is secure. 

I do not come here to praise American nor to bury it. Simply put, I can now offer my slant on what its future holds. Over the past several years, some airlines have combined forces (United/Continental and Delta/Northwest) while American chose to refrain from matchmaking. Regardless, we still have “the big three” and each is a member of one of three airline alliances: Star, SkyTeam, and OneWorld.

It is clear to me that American views a rosier future within OneWorld than independently growing by adding aircraft to the fleet and employees to the payroll. Management has come out and said as much when, in describing a new partnership with British Air, they state that the cooperation is “metal neutral”. In other words, AA doesn’t much care upon which airline the passenger books a flight. It seems that they consider the money gained from an American-ticketed passenger on a BA flight as pure profit and this does not bode well for AA employees looking to advance up the seniority list through growth. Likewise, other airlines within an alliance will rely on their partners to provide service to cities they, themselves, don’t serve rather than investing in aircraft and personnel.

I don’t believe that the other two airlines (UAL and Delta) feel much different and see a time in the not-too-distant future where we will have three major airlines called, you guessed it, OneWorld, SkyTeam, and Star. And you, the paying passenger will have little control over which airline you fly when booking an alliance flight. Additionally, within the alliance, member airlines can whipsaw employees against each other in an attempt to further ratchet down compensation and benefits. It will also be harder for a specific airline group to seek redress through the courts because international law will now be involved.

I think one can also expect a move to raise the limit on foreign ownership of US carriers and, eventually, the elimination of the prohibition on cabotage. Cabotage allows a foreign airline to transport US passengers within this country. (Yes, Lufthansa can fly from LAX to JFK to Frankfort, but they can’t drop any LAX passengers off at JFK.) If this final piece falls into place, the United States airline industry will have officially succumbed to the forces of globalization and I don’t think anyone is naive enough to think that, as a result, air travel will enjoy a return to the days of ease and pleasure.

So there you have it: my view of the future of the airline industry.  No longer a participant, I remain an interested observer from the nose-bleed seats. I hope I’m wrong and I hope that our elected officials will strive to maintain our air transportation system independent of foreign and corporate influence. But that hope hasn’t borne much fruit in other industries, has it?

Qualifications

Many of us possess some sort of qualification to perform specific tasks. Probably the most common is the driver’s license: it “qualifies” an individual to operate a motor vehicle. Some qualifications can be found on the walls of doctor’s or lawyer’s offices and they attest to a level of expertise in each case. I carry my qualification in my wallet. It is an Airline Transport Pilot rating, is issued by the FAA, and qualifies me to fly in the left seat of a commercial airliner. It is the gold standard of aviation and every commercial airline captain carries such a certificate.

In recent media reports, much has been made of the Colgan Air captain involved in the Buffalo, NY crash having failed numerous checkrides. It is this point that I wish to dwell on for a few moments and hope you have the time and inclination to read further.

In my thirty nine years of aviation affiliation, I have taken countless checkrides. And a portion of my Air Force career was dedicated to administering checkrides to fellow pilots. I am proud to say that, through a combination of timing, skill, and luck, I have never failed a checkride. That is not meant to portray myself as the brightest bulb in the box. I am far from infallible and remind myself of that fact every time I strap into my aircraft.

To arbitrarily consign an aviator to mediocrity based solely on the number of failed checkrides is to oversimplify a complicated issue to the point where any meaningful conclusion is impossible. I have seen colleagues who are more than capable pilots fail a checkride for a variety of reasons. Generally, the failure is due to the misapplication or poor timing in the performance of a given procedure. A mistake, in other words. While a checkride is only a snapshot of a pilot’s ability, it affords one the opportunity to learn from such a mistake and re-attempt the task. There are many reasons behind a busted ride, but all evaluations have a common conclusion: satisfactory performance.

Did you fail your first driver’s test? How about the bar exam? Or your medical boards? Or perhaps you had more than one failed attempt. We do not look back in such a way after a car crash or an undesirable verdict or an unsuccessful surgery. Why should we after a plane crash? Granted, such failures may illuminate shortcomings in training or ability, but to take the results out of hand and render a blanket condemnation serves no useful purpose.

Should airlines be afforded the opportunity of reviewing an applicant’s complete aviation history? Of course, but such background investigation has been spotty, at best. Perhaps due to an FAA mentality of voluntary compliance, perhaps due to a supply and demand dilemma at the regional airlines who are finding it increasingly difficult to find would-be employees willing to work long hours for low pay. In either case, there is nothing wrong with a peak into the past so long as it is accompanied with an explanation of any questionable areas.

Ironically, I am currently embroiled in a debate over “qualification” with my employer (a major US legacy airline). The airline has elected to modify the instrumentation of the aircraft I fly from old, “steam driven”, round gauges to a state of the art electronic display . This new display provides me all of my basic flight information: airspeed, altimetry, rate of climb/descent, and the like. In my 24 years at this airline, I have never flown a similarly equipped aircraft. Nevertheless, last November, in my scheduled recurrent training session, I watched a short video on this new equipment and took a short quiz. At the conclusion of this quiz, the instructor told the entire class that we were now “qualified” to fly a jet with this new display. I took exception to this and immediately contacted the appropriate powers-that-be. “Don’t worry,” they said. “You’ll be down for a simulator before you’ll ever see it on the line.”

Unfortunately, that promise rang hollow. I have yet to return for my next recurrent training session and was presented with the new display just several weeks ago. Knowing full well the possible ramifications, I turned and walked off the aircraft. I advised the proper folks that I did not feel qualified to fly with such a novel and untried presentation without first seeing it in a simulated environment. “Well, you’re qualified,” they said. Yes, by virtue of a check mark in a box I was, indeed, technically qualified. On a more pragmatic scale, though, I was anything but fully prepared to conduct a safe and uneventful flight.

We each must hold ourselves accountable when operating under the “qualifications” of any permit, license, or approving authority. Drunk driving or any other careless behavior predicated upon the theory of “it’ll be alright” is a dereliction of the responsibility accompanying the qualification. While my airline (and the FAA) consider me qualified to command an aircraft with a display format I have yet to actually touch, activate, and (yes) make a mistake, I beg to differ. The unwritten contract I have with my crew and my passengers expecting only the best from me holds far more import.