Comment by jacquesm 4 days ago
Management can't cut fuel reserves, not because the pilots are unionized but because there are some very strict rules about these fuel estimations prior to take off and margins be damned. And those rules are exactly there because otherwise this kind of incident would happen far more frequently. But it's regulation that is the backstop here, not the pilots.
As I wrote elsewhere in this thread I actually wrote software to estimate the amount of fuel a jet should load to comply with the rules. This was commissioned by the airline and they were scared shitless that they would ever be found to be in breach of the regulations on this aspect. It is one of those red lines that you really do not wish to cross. There are other aspects of flight where you are right but this particular one is different.
The main reason why airlines would like to take the least amount of fuel is because it immediately increases payload capacity and thus flight efficiency. This being a cut-throat market there is a serious incentive to cut it as fine as possible. So the regulations around this particular issue are incredibly strict: you have to have a certain amount of fuel left upon landing, you have to write up truthfully how much you still had left and you will be investigated without fail if you cut into the reserve. The good thing about unions here is that they help to make sure that pilots know they are safe reporting truthfully because the airlines can not retaliate if they would pressure the pilot to not report an incident (which all pilots would normally definitely do). So they're a factor, but it is the regulator that writes the rules here and they are super strict about this.
And that's immediately why the calculation of the estimate becomes so important: you now have 30 minutes (or 45, depending) of deadweight + the deadweight for two alternates and an x amount of time in a holding pattern, plus up to three go-arounds. That really adds up, so you have to do your best to get the calculation as close as possible to what it will be in practice without ever cutting into that reserve.
It took me the better part of a year and massive amount of learning to write a small amount of code + associated tests to pass certification. It also taught me more about software engineering (as opposed to development) than anything I did up to that point in time and it made me very wary about our normal software development practices.
As an aviation fan just reading this thread is quite eye-opening in terms of how much risk tolerance the average commenter has vs what is standard in the aviation community and on aviation forums. It's almost like peeking into two different worlds. I wonder if there would be any value in teaching an "engineering when lives are on the line" or "war stories from accident investigations" classes to new engineers. I feel like there's value in appreciating just how much more work goes into building a system where people's lives are at stake.
Yeah it bothers me to no end with the "engineering"-inflation of various jobs.
Like, I'm definitively not an engineer, nor does my day job really involve engineering, yet my title contains Engineer! I'm a proud CRUD monkey and designer.
I have done engineering work previously when developing hardware, and it's really a different mindset (even in an agile & fast-moving engineering org). Safety, cost, reliability, multidisciplinary integration, etc. just don't really come up in a lot in web and app development (which is a wonderful thing, really—I love it!)
It is an endless source of frustration to see poorly engineered software solutions powering critical systems.
> I wonder if there would be any value in teaching an "engineering when lives are on the line" or "war stories from accident investigations" classes to new engineers.
There would be immense value in that. But who is going to pay for it? It's a course that will essentially cause your crew to start producing software at 1/10th the rate they would otherwise do.
> I think the literal fear of death _might_ be motivation enough for pilots to advocate for safety?
You'd think, but individual humans are very very bad at estimating risk, and in toxic group and work situations, humans will often take on increased personal risk rather than risk conflict. I.e., they will value group conformity over their own safety ... especially if their paycheck is involved. Fear of death is not nearly as powerful as robust regulation and unions.
Regulations are paper. Who enforces the behaviour, of whether to take off or not, on a windy night in central Italy?
Of course the pilots are the backstop, and the unions are theirs, so they can make necessary calls the money doesn't like.
The union is a nice backstop for issues around the edges that come up with corporate, but the real backstop is the pilots’ licensing. By making them directly responsible for the plane as PIC, it gives them leverage over their employer that few other professions have. AIR-21 gives them significant protection from retaliation and the ASRS is confidential. ALPA helps them navigate that mess if it comes to it, but that’s the real legal backing that pilots have.
Same thing happens with Professional Engineers regardless of whether they are employed or work as independent consultants/firms. They’re legally responsible for the bridges and other infrastructure they sign off on with laws protecting them from employers and clients.
(I fully support the ALPA and other unions, I just don’t think it plays as significant a role in following regulations as you claim)
...that regulation is text in a database. It can be changed capriciously at any moment, like they often are.
It takes people with ideas and a willingness to put pressure in the right places to be sure that sane policies prevail.
I think it's pretty obvious that as time moves forward, we need to rely on "regulations" less. The root and history of the word in the political context is to make things regular. But state actions increasingly bring irregularity to the world.
It seems absolutely fair to say that, in this situation, the people - the pilots in particular, but also cabin crews, ATCs, engineers, and their unions, are the backstop worth observing and celebrating.
If you land with less fuel than the legal minimum you are going to have a lot of explaining to do, there will be an investigation and you, the pilot and the airline will get enough headache from it that you will make bloody sure it does not happen again. The pilot(s) may not be able to fly until that investigation has run its course, the airline may get fined or warned if this is the first time it happened. In an extreme case the pilots may lose their license.
> It seems absolutely fair to say that, in this situation, the people - the pilots in particular, but also cabin crews, ATCs, engineers, and their unions, are the backstop worth observing and celebrating.
I will hold off on that conclusion until the report is in. There are so many possible root causes here that speculation is completely useless, and celebrations would be premature.
My apologies - I didn't mean to speculate about this incident in particular, but about the general role of so-called "regulation"; I thought it was unfair to minimize the role of the people and unions compared to the (in my view, comparatively flimsy) legislation.
I think the thing that's being pointed out as overlooked when praising the employees and the unions, is the regulators, who are the people who play a very large part in making sure that the regulations are enforced. The regulations are just text in a database, but it's the regulators who actually make it happen. A pilot who wants to push back against a beancounter cutting corners has a union and a regulatory agency to back them up.
The point is that the unions are there to allow the pilots to advocate for all kinds of safety-of-flight related things like fuel reserves, crew rest, and so forth that management would be happy to cut to save money. And to do so without fear of retaliation.
And if you don't think the airlines would love to lobby Congress about the regulatory backstop, well . . .