Great Safety Protocols with some airlines

I had the pleasure to spend a half hour today talking with a Virgin Air pilot stationed out of the West Coast. He explained this great system of pilot review. First, the Airlines and the pilots all agree that safety is the number one consideration. yet when dealing with Unions and management Safety sometimes takes a backseat to protected turf of each of the sides. In recent years some of the major airlines are going to third party Safety reviewers. Each flight now is digitally captured. Within those flights they have a green designation which means safe flying, a yellow designation which means caution some safety concerns are not being met, and a red designation which means in this flight during this period of time the pilot was putting the plane at unnecessary risk or violating current safety criteria.

The beauty of this system is that it is cloud based and the pilots can self check at any time. If they see they had a red area on a flight, they call this independent safety organization, and the pilot must explain what happened. The safety organization will after the explanation say ok, or they will say come on down next Tuesday, and we are going to spend three days retraining. Nothing goes to the company or the Union. However, if there is a pattern of reckless or gross incompetence both the Union and company are notified. Pilots are constantly improving their skills. What was great is this pilot has had Scully on his jump seat, and has met the owner of Virgin Airlines and had a beer. He said both of these people were great human beings. I am really encouraged when a system can be put in place which protects the public with all the players cooperating. It would be great if we could get something like this with guns. Some independent organization other than the government focusing on just gun safety, and everybody feeling comfortable so a system of keeping guns out of unauthorized folks hands could be developed.

In the end, we have safer airlines because we addressed a flawed system and now can give great safety review in real time to pilots without secondary considerations.

Gotta tell you one story, SO...perhaps off topic to some degree.

One of the funniest guys I met at the wedding was an Attorney from S. Florida who flew up and has had a license to carry for years and packs.

It was on his SECOND flight that he reached into his bag for ear buds and found his 380. Yes, it made it through the first flight check.

He said he nearly puked, did other things (which I will not describe) and panicked until he landed.

So much for security, heh?

If you saw the movie bridesmaid.......one of the characters put a loaded gun in the grooms carry on bag....it happened to be her brother, but I think the line went something like...."when they find the gun.....they will rip him a new one......."

Well it appears that maybe not. What is beautiful about the instrumentation in the Air bus is that it is recording all the flight information and uploading to the safety agency database. It would be interesting if this same standard was applied to our safety folks who hold us up at airports and view our bodies in graphic detail.......yep, it would be interesting to see how often this really happens....my guess more often than we care to think.

2seaoat wrote:If you saw the movie bridesmaid.......one of the characters put a loaded gun in the grooms carry on bag....it happened to be her brother, but I think the line went something like...."when they find the gun.....they will rip him a new one......."

Well it appears that maybe not. What is beautiful about the instrumentation in the Air bus is that it is recording all the flight information and uploading to the safety agency database. It would be interesting if this same standard was applied to our safety folks who hold us up at airports and view our bodies in graphic detail.......yep, it would be interesting to see how often this really happens....my guess more often than we care to think.

Smile.......I agree. We dare not think about it!

Instrumentation is probably a whole lot more reliable than TSA agents.

FWIW

Instrumentation is probably a whole lot more reliable than TSA agents.

I imagine if TSA agents could be tracked everyday as to performance, what would fall into the red zone would be arrogance and rudeness........but those are very difficult to quantify.....because if it was easy....you would think by now they would learn to treat the public with respect.