Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-17-Speech-3-273"
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"en.20010117.8.3-273"2
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"Mr President, Mr Simpson's report is truly excellent, and I am qualified to say so for I consider myself to be one of the few people who are familiar with the technical as well as the political side of the sector, having recorded almost 10 000 flight hours precisely as a member of a flight crew before devoting myself to politics.
I would point out that safety is the priority in air transport. Safety can be considered to be based on two elements: the technical element, such as the resources, aircraft, airports, radio aid, air traffic control and so on and so forth, and then the human element, which is extremely important and, although not the principal cause, has been found to be a contributing factor in an extremely high percentage of aircraft accidents. The human element is, of course, extremely complex and, for simplicity's sake, can be divided into two main categories. One of these is training, and in this area all the appropriate controls and checks must be carried out. I can say from my own experience that flight crews are properly trained for, apart from anything else, there are no substandard pilots. As a general rule, substandard pilots do not fly: they are all resting in peace underground. The other category is workload.
The problems here are enormous: on the one hand, there is the need to make both aircraft and staff fly as much as possible, and on the other, there is the need to avoid pushing human beings, especially, beyond their physical and mental limits. Sleep, the disruption of circadian rhythms and so on clearly influence flight safety as well as the personal health of the members of the flight and cabin crews.
Here, then, is the gap in the regulation, for it considers primarily the technical aspect of the resources – aircraft load factors, loading operations, length of runways, screen heights
etc. – but it is effectively lacking in any provisions on the workloads of the staff. I am not talking as a trade unionist here but precisely as a user of air transport who would dearly like to have a guarantee – although I regret that a 100% guarantee is impossible – which is as high as possible and avoids excessive exploitation of the human element which is liable to have serious or even fatal consequences.
Another factor to be taken into consideration is competition. If there are no standard rules, some of the airlines who exploit their staff will be able to reduce their costs and therefore offer more competitive prices, distorting what ought to be fair
competition in a sector which is now almost completely liberalised. However, we could even go so far as to talk of unfair or irregular competition if this factor were not taken into account, and I wonder at the fact that neither the Union as a whole nor Parliament, specifically, has succeeded in regulating the matter satisfactorily. Parliament should feel truly ashamed
at not having managed to express a clear opinion or produce an effective definition of all aspects of the issue."@en1
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