ECA Cockpit News January

European safety oversight: understaffed & inconsistent

Achieving the highest possible level of safety in aviation is paramount and requires effective day-to-day safety oversight. Yet, national authorities, responsible by definition for safety oversight, find themselves in a difficult situation to perform their safety-related obligations with dwindling resources and, at times, decreasing competences.
Aircraft accident and incident investigation is just one piece that falls under the safety obligations of national CAAs, but the discrepancies in the two investigations on Ryanair’s fuel emergency landings carried out by the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) and the Spanish Aviation Authority (AESA), illustrated that there may be reasons for concern. With one report exonerating the carrier of flying with too little fuel, and the other claiming the first report was not based on a thorough investigation, things get bizarre.
Read more

Mayday, Mayday

“Mayday Mayday”, is a 2-part documentary produced by Dutch TV programme KRO REPORTER. In these videos you can watch ECA President Nico Voorbach commenting on the anonymous testimonies by Ryanair pilots.
Part 1 (28 Dec 2012)
Part 2 (3 Jan 2013)

New EU Occurrence Reporting Regulation – A move to pro-actively prevent air accidents

European pilots welcome the new Occurrence Reporting Regulation, presented in December by the European Commission, as an important step towards better, pro-active prevention of air accidents. 
The new regulation creates a comprehensive framework for improving the quality and completeness of occurrence data and for timely identification of safety hazards. It also provides for confidentiality of certain information, which will encourage safety professionals, including pilots, to report incidents and thereby ‘feed’ a forward-looking accident prevention system across Europe.
“This regulation was an absolute necessity for a more efficient European reporting system. It will shift the focus from a primarily ‘reactive’ system, where we tried to learn from accidents, to a pro-active risk- and evidence-based system”, said Nico Voorbach, ECA President. “This is excellent news, and Europe’s pilots will be keen to contribute to making this new system a success.”
Read more

Walkout for Safety
On 22 January pilots and cabin crew will hold parallel ‘Walkouts’ and rallies across Europe calling on European politicians to take steps and put passenger safety before the commercial interests of the airlines. We invite you to join ECA and ETF and to support the actions in your country. For campaign updates and important information about the local actions, follow @EU_cockpitand join the official event page!