Organisation of cockpit crews must rank among the airline industry's most sensitive management issues. And central to that debate is the question over the extent to which pilots themselves should be involved in management roles.
It remains a fact of airline life that qualified pilots are a valuable but expensive resource and, in the current climate, one that is relatively scarce. Normal business pressures should, therefore, dictate that they be used as productively as possible on core line duties and not detained in the office.Yet there are equally sound personnel reasons to integrate pilots into the company's culture and give them the opportunity for a management career.
In order to help provide a clearer understanding of the issues, AT Kearney has carried out a benchmarking study of management pilot organisations across Europe. The research covered a broad spread of flag carriers - Aer Lingus, Air France, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, Olympic, Sabena, SAS and Swissair - and revealed an equally broad range of organisational structures. Not least were wide variations in the number of management pilot roles and their level of compensation. In the smaller airlines more than 5% of all pilots had an additional office-related assignment, while in one large carrier this had been cut to only 1%.
The role of pilots
The starting point for any discussion of crew management must be to recognise that pilots have always been something of a special case within the airline industry.
It is clear that commercial pilots belong to a highly trained and well paid professional group. Much of what they do is bounded by strict national and international regulations which determine everything from training and performance requirements through to working hours.
Pilots also have a unique level of solidarity with their profession. There is almost no other group within the airline business, or any other industry, which has the same levels of compensation set down by a collective agreement, nor the same power to negotiate working hours and conditions. However, pilots do not necessarily see themselves as privileged. Their image can rather be as the exploited backbone supporting the rest of the company. In the air, they are the undisputed leaders, on the ground they often feel like anonymous working resources prone to being labelled as arrogant and vain.
There is another distinctive feature which sets pilots apart from other airline professionals. The pilot's workplace is not the office but the cockpit - a place physically and mentally distanced from the normal routines of corporate life at the company's home base. On the whole, their contact is restricted to other air crew and operations support staff. Discussions still go on over how to help integrate pilots into the corporate culture and improve understanding between cockpit crews and ground staff.
Within this framework it may seem desirable to help integrate cockpit crews into the general management process, by providing pilots with management assignments. It is also generally true that pilots do not expect to report to a manager who does not also hold a pilot's licence.
However, this needs to be balanced against the underlying corporate drive to raise productivity and manage unit costs. These goals suggest that highly-paid pilot licence holders should be employed, wherever possible, on line duties. Neither does a crew qualification necessarily confer any broad management skills on the pilot, while the need for intermittent absences from the office to perform line duties, is not an ideal basis for effective personnel management.
Consequently, the availability of pilots for management duties, whether within the crew organisation or elsewhere, remains restricted. That leaves some tough questions as to which management positions should go to pilot licence holders and which would be better dedicated to full-time ground personnel. Also, how can cost priorities and management effectiveness be balanced in terms of personal qualification and acceptance?
Organisational concepts
An initial distinction can be made between two broad categories of management assignments. The first concerns fleet-related management of crews. At its most basic this fleet management function could simply be restricted to a chief pilot position.
The second is concerned with support areas such as training, flight engineering, crew scheduling and a range of staff functions. These can be either centralised across the airline or devolved down to fleet level. The benchmarking study showed that there is little standardisation between airlines about how this split is handled. There are, however, two broad models.
The first is a largely decentralised organisation, with training and flight engineering assignments carried out, as much as possible, at individual fleet level - split by aircraft type or perhaps into long/short-haul groupings. However, functional reporting lines still need to be drawn between the crews and the central departments covering operations and training standards. That is required in order to assure compliance with Europe's JAR OPS 1 quality operations standards, where the head of operations, as accountable manager, must have responsibility for the operation as a whole.
The second model is largely centralised. Technical chief pilots and the training functions are fully integrated into their respective fleet-wide reporting lines.
Both concepts have their advantages. The centralised organisation allows the creation of cross-fleet synergies and maintenance of common standards. However, the decentralised structure contributes as much expertise as possible to the front end of the value chain. And decentralisation would seem to fit better with modern ideas of quality management and leadership principles.
These two examples, however, only represent the clearest cases within a range of solutions. Other airlines in the benchmark showed a mix of the two approaches.
It is clear that the fleet managers, who are the disciplinary superiors of the cockpit crews of the individual fleets, must hold a valid pilot's licence. Together with the head of flight operations and the head of training, they constitute the minimum number of management pilots within an airline to comply with Europe's civil aviation authority and JAROPS regulations.
No other management functions specifically require a pilot's licence. Obviously, a relevant pilot qualification is needed for carrying out test flights and other such flight-related assignments, but these do not require a separate management position.
However all but one of the airlines in the benchmark study incorporated the position of technical chief pilot within their flight operations structure. Airlines accepted the reduced line productivity because these management pilots serve as competent contacts not only for issues regarding flight engineering and maintenance, but also for the line pilot organisation of the respective fleet. This interface helps to ensure effective communication and generate a common understanding of procedures and the technical condition of the fleet. Besides the obvious technical understanding, this role also requires managerial skills and acceptance of competencies by both the pilot organisation and the flight engineering and maintenance department. Similar arguments justify the appointment of a chief flight instructor at fleet level.
It would seem reasonable enough to base fleet management around these three chief pilot positions. But many airlines also dedicate management pilot positions in administrative support areas. Yet it seems questionable as to whether the management of crew scheduling or flight engineering can be performed most effectively by a pilot on a part-time basis alongside his line duties. The pilot qualification adds little to the management of these core administrative functions. The necessary skills and management presence would seem to be better served by a full-time manager.
Safety pilots, who traditionally occupy a management position in European airlines, are no longer required as part of the quality system. However, with the exception of only one airline, the idea of JAR OPS 1 regarding quality management organisation, has not yet influenced the traditional view of safety pilot organisations.
For line operations, the understanding of quality management (including preventive, standard procedures and clear allocation of responsibilities)was already being practiced before discussions of JAR OPS 1T. But internal support functions, such as crew scheduling or flight engineering, are not yet part of this quality system in most cases.
This suggests a somewhat restricted understanding of the scope of a quality management system - extending to all aspects of safety but not necessarily touching on performance or cost effectiveness. A lack of quality management in crew scheduling, for example, might not directly affect safety, but in many cases may lead to crew rosters which neither serve the company's interest in terms of productivity and cost effectiveness, nor meet win acceptance of crews.
Economies of scale?
Among the findings from the benchmark study was an indication of how larger airlines win economies of scale, with a smaller proportion of their pilots engaged in management assignments. Despite the wide variations in fleet size, the overall number of management pilots in each airline was remarkably similar, ranging around an average of 31. By far the largest carrier in the benchmark, Airline 7, was actually below this average with 28 management pilots - less than some of its much smaller competitors. The second largest carrier, Airline 6, was an exception to the trend, with a sizeable tally of management pilots. However, the airline has three countries for its home market and has based cockpit crews in each. .
One of the smallest airlines in the benchmarking exercise, Airline 1, showed the worst performance in terms of the ratio between aircraft numbers and management pilots. Up to six pilots were assigned per fleet to cover all kinds of management projects in flight engineering. However, a re-engineering project showed that its management pilot organisation could be downsized considerably. After reassigning management tasks that did not necessarily require a pilot qualification and refocusing the remaining duties around fewer management pilots the overall numbers on were cut by around half.
The impact on productivity
The impact on line productivity depends not only on the number of pilots involved in management roles, but also on how much time each individual can dedicate to ground assignments and how much to cockpit duties. There was a wide variation here too among the benchmarked airlines. Job descriptions in most cases included a standard division, but ranging from 25% of regular line pilot duties to 75%.
However, this split did not necessarily correspond to real operations. No airline provided solid data on line duty hours and discussions showed that the line productivity of management pilots did not correlate with the size of the company.
In most airlines, the workload of management pilots included a considerable volume of tasks that could have been delegated to administrative ground personnel. Rather than provide additional secretarial and administrative support, airlines seemed inclined to accept high office workloads for their management pilots, despite the fact that this considerably reduced availability for line duties.
Whereas in some airlines, management pilots were subject to standard roster procedures for line pilot duties, in others management pilots were fully pre-assigned according to their request. In two cases the privilege to fly on a request basis was dedicated to senior management pilots only. The influence on their own line duty pattern is certainly one of the incentives when applying for a management position.
The unpleasant side of the alleged privilege in many airlines is when management pilots are used as a hidden standby reserve to fill the gap when scheduled standby reserves do not cover requirements, or where line pilots refuse to accept a pattern, referring to collective agreements or contract conditions.
One airline even stated that enhancing commitment beyond the restrictions of the collective agreement was one of the primary reasons for creating chief pilot positions. Solidarity is still taken much more seriously among pilots than in other parts of the organisation. One airline reported that union representatives and the internal line pilot representatives reduce the involvement of pilots in management assignments for this reason. In conclusion, the privilege of gaining influence on one's own roster does not come for free.
Compensation schemes
A final factor determining the overall economic impact of management pilots comes from the levels of compensation. In most of the benchmarked companies this depended on position and seniority - although three carriers made no distinction in monthly pay according to position.
The averages for the benchmark, however, demonstrate the seniority scale. At entrance level (chief flight instructors, technical and fleet pilots), the average additional pay is some Euro 1,300 per month. By the medium/ vice president level that has risen to Euro 1,750. The average pay for Head of Flight Operations to compensate for management duties is Euro 2,250 per month.
In general, the additional pay seemed not to be the primary motivator for pilots to opt for a management career. On the contrary, several airlines stated that normal line pilots had compensation which frequently exceeded that of a management pilot when allowances and overtime pay were taken into consideration.
The opportunity to bear extended responsibility within the company and gain influence seems to be the driving force behind management pilot careers, rather than compensation. That, perhaps, serves to demonstrate the potential contradictions in assessing the right structure for cockpit crew organisation.
Source: Airline Business
