Airline pilots are expensive to obtain, train and retain. If they wield their industrial muscle it hurts. How should airlines manage them?
It is axiomatic that one of the most critical aspects of running a modern airline profitably and safely is the relationship between the company and its frontline employees - the ones that deliver the service the customers actually see and feel. These include check-in staff, cabin crew and pilots.
Behind the scenes another critical group is the engineers and mechanics. If aeroplanes don't work, no business gets done if they go wrong operations are disrupted, accident risk increases, and the company image suffers.
All these people are company assets. Training cabin crew and check-in staff is not as expensive as training engineers and pilots, so high staff turnover in those departments is less costly and easier to deal with. High turnover among pilots and engineers is costly, and both these specialised professions in the fast-growing airline world are a finite resource. If the airlines don't do their recruitment and training planning well for these groups - and history shows they don't - resources like pilots and engineers cannot be generated overnight. There is a long training lead time, and the supply systems are not, at present, geared up for the global demand.
For these reasons the relationship airlines have with their pilots and engineering staff is important if the companies are to get the best out of them, and to cut departures by skilled staff to more appealing alternative employers. These issues were examined at Flight International's Crew Management Conference in Brussels two weeks ago. The alternative management styles for interfacing with the pilot workforce were studied in two presentations entitled "Can recognising a pilot association be good management in a modern airline?"
Well, there would have been two presentations, but despite our best efforts, no airline would take up the challenge of arguing its case - either for or against the proposition. Meanwhile, president of the Irish Airline Pilots' Association Capt Evan Cullen put the case - predictably - that recognition was good for airlines, and then the subject was thrown open to the floor for discussion.
Southwest Airlines has its own pilot association, which works with management EasyJet does not have a formal relationship with a pilot association but always talks to pilot representatives but Ryanair - with its Dublin headquarters in Capt Cullen's back yard - refuses to recognise any form of pilot association. These are all successful low-cost airlines, but Ryanair has the biggest profit margins. Does that mean pilot associations are bad news for shareholders? Such a conclusion would be overly simplistic.
Cullen says carriers typically have one of three sorts of relationships with their pilot workforce: co-operative, benign or hostile. That sounds suspiciously like, respectively, Southwest, EasyJet and Ryanair, but no names were mentioned. Perhaps the adjective "hostile" is arguable, but clearly Cullen chose it in preference to "adversarial", and cases brought - and lost - by Ryanair in the Irish courts recently against individual pilots and IALPA testify to a combative approach. KLM, represented at the conference, would fit in the "co-operative" category, and it declares it does not have any pilot turnover.
Cullen concentrated on the demonstrable operational effects of these three different kinds of relationships with pilots. According to IALPA data, in a co-operative or benign environment, pilots tend to report safety-related incidents and problems that might affect their safe performance, whereas in a "hostile" environment the figures show a marked tendency for pilots to cover up problems - or at least to fail to report them. This was highlighted when operational data monitoring became mandatory in Europe: pilot incident reporting in "hostile" environments increased by about 80%, says Cullen. That may not constitute proof that 80% of reportable incidents were previously not reported, but it makes you wonder.
Pilots care about doing their job well. It's one of those professions in which a drop in performance shows immediately: everybody recognises a bad landing, especially the pilot who did it. Setting up an adversarial relationship with pilots is bad for safety, and accidents are bad for business. Any airline operating a hostile system is walking a safety tightrope, however well they train their pilots.
And the result of the floor discussion following Cullen's presentation? No-one challenged him.
Source: Flight International
