THE WALRUS· NOVEMBER 2009
TRANSPORT

Fly At Your Own Risk

Why is Transport Canada moving toward self-regulation for the countrys airlines?

BY CAROL SHABEN
 
THE WIDOW

IN A SMALL BALLROOM at the Best Western Hotel near Vancouver's airport, Kirsten Stevens, a tattooed single mother of three, rises to take the podium, her hands trembling. Dressed casually in black cords and an emerald green shirt, the forty-two-year-old resident of Campbell River, BC, known as the Widow to many in attendance, stands out from the suit-clad presenters who preceded her. Petite-just five feet three and 115 pounds-with a barely tamed bob of cinnamon-coloured hair and brown eyes, she surveys the audience from behind stylish cat's-eye glasses.

"This is going to be my first time telling this story," she says, clearing her throat and glancing at the sheets clutched in her hands. "Four years ago, I could not have conceived of speaking at an aviation leadership forum. Four years ago, I was a housewife with two children and a newborn baby. In just under two weeks, it will be the fourth anniversary of the day I became a widow-the day  the picket fence blew down."

On February 28, 2005, Stevens' husband, Dave, a professional logger, and four others were en route from Campbell River to a camp near Knight Inlet on BC's rugged west coast when their De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver float plane plunged into the water just six minutes after takeoff. Two days later, Dave's body, buoyed by the survival jacket Kirsten had bought him years before, washed up on Quadra Island, five kilometres from where the plane had taken off. His was the only body ever recovered. The autopsy showed that he had escaped the aircraft largely unharmed, only to succumb to severe hypothermia and drown while awaiting a rescue that never came. A resident of Quadra Island heard cries for help but couldn't see their source. It had taken four hours for the office of the air carrier (which has since shut down) to alert search and rescue teams, even though staff knew the plane was missing within twenty minutes of takeoff.

Dave's death opened a chasm of what-ifs for Stevens. "What if the aircraft was perfectly maintained?" she asks her audience. "What if aircraft were always tracked? What if there had been no delay in notifying authorities of the missing aircraft? Could the accident have been prevented? Could all five men have been rescued? Could they have rescued the only man wearing a life jacket-my husband? Could we have celebrated a successful emergency water landing like the one on the Hudson River, instead of mourning the losses of five families? Ten children left without their fathers?"

After a three-day search failed to turn up any trace of the downed plane or the victims, government authorities handed the matter over to the RCMP, which classified it as a missing persons case. A month later, all official searches were completely shut down. Stevens expected that a government agency would investigate the deaths of her husband and the four others as workplace fatalities, but none did. Pooling their meagre resources, the families recovered the wreckage and, later, the plane's engine. Stevens also appealed in vain to a wide and varied list of  authorities: the federal minister of transport, infrastructure, and communities; BC's minister of transportation and infrastructure; Canada's Transportation Safety Board; the federal minister of labour; the provincial ministry of labour and citizens' services; the provincial ombudsman of justice; her provincial MLA; her federal MP; several BC senators; the standing committee on transport and communications; and BC's Workers' Compensation Board. Eventually, the families hired a private investigative firm, which found that the plane's floats were "leakers" long overdue for reskinning, that there were non-conforming parts on the aircraft, and that the plane was due for a major overhaul. The firm also speculated that the airline had not carried out mandatory 100-hour inspections of the plane's engine.

The only official report Stevens received came from BC's chief coroner's office-more than four years after the crash. The account, she says, was riddled with inaccuracies and omissions and failed to provide her or the other victims' families with any sense of closure. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada - the independent agency mandated to investigate crashes for cause and contributing factors-did not follow up, claiming there was nothing new to be learned. (Nor, says Stevens, is there any reference to the accident on the TSB's website, which lists only two passenger deaths by air taxi in 2005, the year of her husband's crash.) In a discussion with the coroner, Stevens learned that Bill Yearwood, the board's Pacific Region manager for aviation, had submitted a preliminary report on the accident, which she obtained by submitting an access to information request. In Yearwood's account, the TSB'S inspection showed no evidence of problems with the aircraft's engine, performance, or maintenance. Instead, it indicated that poor weather and the pilot's qualifications and experience may have been factors-an outcome Stevens refers to as "blaming the dead guy."

When she realized her husband's death might have been prevented, Stevens began reading everything she could about the  aviation industry: Canadian aeronautics regulations, the Aeronautics Act, crash investigation reports, civil aviation studies and recommendations, and books with titles like Managing the Risks of Organ izationalA ccidents; Black Box: Why Air Safety Is No Accident; and Flying Blind, Flying Safe. She also joined AvCanada, Canada's busiest aviation employment website and discussion forum, where she discovered that many aviation professionals shared her concerns about the lack of oversight of Canada's commercial air carriers.

Then she got vocal. Fuelled by coffee and menthol cigarettes, she worked six hours a day out of a dimly lit den at the back of her three-storey house, not far from where her husband died. She wrote letters to unions and government officials, and launched QuestForJustice.ca and a blog called DHC2 Widow's Space, both dedicated to aviation safety. She initiated a petition to Stephen Harper's office, asking for a.public inquiry into her husband's accident and the air taxi industry in Canada. Slowly, others in the air safety community started paying attention.

Her mission has since broadened to encompass the overall decline in Canada's aviation safety standards, and especially recent federal legislation involving a cost-cutting approach called safety management systems. SMS is a form of industry self-regulation in which airlines develop and maintain their own safety protocols. Under SMS, the responsibility for hands-on monitoring largely shifts from the government to the airlines themselves. The legislation has been making its way through Parliament in various forms since 2001. Its latest incarnation, Bill C-7, An Act to Amend the Aeronautics Act, died last September when Parliament was dissolved in advance of the federal election, but Transport Canada is moving ahead with SMS nonetheless. The department intends to have the protocol fully implemented across all regulated civil aviation organizations by November 2011. In concert with other critics, Stevens charges that the government is using self-regulation to justify extensive cutbacks to traditional oversight programs. She has mounted a spirited campaign to stop Transport Canada, garnering support from pilots, victims' families, whistleblowers, and organizations across the country.

When Stevens finishes speaking, the audience gives her the only standing ovation of the day. As she makes her way back to her table, the first person to offer a congratulatory hug is Yearwood. During the coffee break that follows, delegates surround her. Among them are two old-time pilots. “We learned something from you,” says Horst, a robust, greying man with a thick German accent. “We always have our life jackets in the back. We’re going to wear them.” Wilf, a former air force pilot with a wiry build, raises a finger in the air. “Accountability,” he says with conviction, “that’s what’s needed.”

THE PILOT

SMS has already been implemented in many corners of Canadian aviation, including at major airlines like Air Canada and WestJet. Next on the horizon are the country’s smaller operators, which have fewer resources and face greater risks than the big carriers. Transport Canada’s supervision of this sector has traditionally been lax, raising serious concerns about the 600 operators flying more than 2,000 small aircraft nationwide. This fleet encompasses air taxis (single- or multi-engine planes that can carry up to nine passengers) and commuter craft (multi-engine or turbo-powered planes, plus helicopters, carrying between ten and nine-teen passengers).

Collectively, such operators transport upwards of 100,000 passengers a year in Canada, serving as feeders for the major airlines, and providers of specialty services such as transporting tourists to fishing lodges and the injured to hospitals. They also conduct aerial work, carry workers to various service jobs in industry (logging, hydro, and district court services) and ferry food and freight to remote northern communities. The sector accounts for more than half the country’s commercial aviation — and a disproportionate number of its accidents and fatalities.

Bush flying, the forerunner of modern air taxi and commuter operations, originated in the Canadian North, where poor weather, harsh terrain, scant roads, and the isolation of communities made air transport essential. In his 2004 book, Bush Pilots: Canada’s Wilderness Daredevils, Peter Boer notes that early bush pilots “endured the aggravation of malfunctioning equipment, primitive living quarters and the constant threat of death for relatively low wages… They took satisfaction in surviving in the face of almost overwhelming odds. Landing a plane in the middle of a snowstorm, changing an engine in the middle of the dreaded Barren Lands of the Northwest Territories or hiking endless hours through the bush in search of aid were commonplace events.”

Today the bulk of Canadian aviation still happens in the North. The pilots who fly in the bush tend to be young and inexperienced, and they work in a highly competitive market subject to a kind of “go fever” that encourages them to take risks and push limits. And the conditions in which they fly remain as perilous as ever: bad weather and difficult terrain, not to mention poorly maintained planes. They also typically fly alone. Most rookie pilots cut their teeth with small operations — and since those who can’t make it here often don’t make it at all, the pressure to conform is high.

Owners of air taxi services, meanwhile, were typically bush pilots themselves, and they tend to run their businesses with the same hard-driving attitude, expecting their pilots to fly on a shoestring and to get the job done regardless of weather, fatigue, or cargo load. That they often operate in remote locations further erodes the government’s ability to oversee them.

Erik Vogel understands the perils as well as anyone. Standing six feet three, with broad shoulders, a full head of dark hair, and a neatly groomed moustache, he’s the picture of confidence in uniform. Today his uniform is a firefighter’s, but twenty-five years ago, in 1984, it was that of a rookie pilot with Wapiti Aviation, a small air taxi operation in northern Alberta. That year, his ten-seater Piper Navajo Chieftain slammed into a shrouded ridge, killing provincial NDP leader Grant Notley and five other passengers. (Disclosure: one of the four survivors of the crash was my father, Alberta housing minister Larry Shaben.)

Vogel hadn’t wanted to fly that night. The weather was bad, and his co-pilot had been bumped to accommodate another paying customer: Notley himself. Vogel had lost twenty-five pounds in the five weeks he’d been with Wapiti, and had flown seventeen flights the previous week. He’d also been on call for medevac flights. And he didn’t trust his plane. Its autopilot system had been acting erratically, one of its wing de-icers had broken during a flight earlier that day, and one of its automatic direction finders was also malfunctioning. Getting into the small, uncontrolled airstrips along his flight path would be treacherous. He was in way over his head, and he knew it. He also felt he had no choice but to fly. If he refused, he risked losing his job. Thirty-three pilots had quit or been fired from Wapiti in the previous year.

The crash ended his career. “There’s hardly a day that goes by that I don’t think about it,” he says, seated at a small table at a Vancouver Starbucks. Among the firefighters at Station 4 in Burnaby, he is known as Mr. Safety — a reputation that doesn’t bother him. “I don’t ever again want to be the one to have something bad happen on my watch,” he says.

Vogel still experiences déjà vu when news of other airplane crashes hits the media — for example, the Sonicblue Airways accident in January 2006 near Port Alberni, BC, in which the pilot of a small plane died along with two of his seven passengers. After the crash, the pilot’s father, Jonathan Huggett, com-plained publicly about conditions at Sonicblue, alleging that his son had been abused, grossly underpaid (junior co-pilots with the company normally earned a meagre $28 for a fourteen-hour shift, amounting to about $7,300 a year), and forced to fly in dangerous conditions. “It was Wapiti all over again,” says Vogel, shaking his head. Like Wapiti, Sonicblue had a history of safety violations, though Transport Canada did not suspend the carrier’s licence until after the fatalities occurred.

Whereas the Sonicblue crash was caused by a faulty engine part, Vogel acknowledges he made a mistake the night of his crash, descending below the minimum en route altitude through a bank of thick cloud in an attempt to spot the dim lights of a snow-covered airstrip. Talking about it, he curls his hands into fists then opens them wide, splaying his fingers. “Arthritis,” he says matter-of-factly. When he felt the trees hitting the plane, he instinctively raised his hands in front of his face. They were mangled in the crash, and he’s been losing feeling and mobility in them ever since.

"I run into burning buildings now, and I think my new career is much safer,” Vogel says. To support his three children, he also drives an eighteen-wheeler on his days off. When he’s trucking, he notes, he’s subject to constant checks to ensure he doesn’t exceed his duty time of fourteen hours a day, and his rig can be spot checked at any scale.

During the public inquiry into the crash, he asserted that Transport Canada was partially to blame for allowing airlines like Wapiti to cut corners, push their pilots, and put lives at risk. Then, in a precedent-setting case in 1990, the widows of two men killed in the crash sued the federal government and won. The judge in Swanson v. Canada (Minister of Transport) ruled that Transport Canada was one-third responsible for the deaths, having failed to sanction Wapiti for its repeated violations in the years preceding the crash.

Vogel hoped things would change for the better after Swanson, but he doesn’t think they have — a belief confirmed by “Jason,” a young pilot who declined to give his real name for fear of being blacklisted. Jason affirms that many of today’s bush pilots are cowboys, and says that those who promote a culture of safety are often dismissed. Last year, for example, he shared the cockpit with the owner and chief pilot of his company, during which he was expected to fly perhaps ten metres off the water with a planeload of passengers. “I told my boss I wasn’t comfortable flying below the minimums,” he says. His boss told him to lower them. This season, the company didn’t hire Jason back, saying he “hadn’t been helpful.” Another rookie pilot, who Jason says flew “like an idiot,” remained on the company’s roster.

THE WHISTLE-BLOWER

“Swanson meant a lot to me,” reflects Hugh Danford, a former aviation system safety inspector and course instructor with Transport Canada. Danford, who lives on a peaceful tract of farmland forty minutes from Ottawa, along the Rideau Canal, once taught new inspectors about Wapiti and the Swanson case as part of Transport Canada’s basic aviation enforcement course. “I used it as an example of why inspectors need to do their jobs,” he says, surveying his recently planted plot of garlic. Looking back, he now believes that Swanson, rather than ushering in an era of government responsibility, actually created a chill, marking the beginning of his department’s efforts to get out of the enforcement business.

Before he went to work for the government, Danford was a pilot. His career spanned thirty years and took him to places as far flung as the Arctic and Antarctic, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Maldives. Sixty-two, with a ruddy complexion, blue eyes that sparkle behind wire-rimmed glasses, and a full head of white hair, he’d be a shoo-in for a shopping mall Santa — if, that is, he weren’t so angry.

Danford started at Transport Canada in 1998. Shortly after being hired, he was appointed to a tri-national safety working group of Canadian, American, and Mexican aviation experts seeking to determine the root causes of North American airplane crashes. In 25 percent of the Canadian accidents he reviewed, lack of regulatory supervision appeared to be the problem. One of those accidents involved the “controlled flight into terrain” (literally, flying a plane into the ground) of a De Havilland dhc-6 Twin Otter off Davis Inlet, Labrador, in 1999. Marcel Jaspar, the pilot in command on the flight, which killed its twenty-two-year-old first officer, Damien Hancock, had been in four previous crashes and had a lengthy enforcement record with Transport Canada.

In spite of this, the department took no action against the pilot or the airline immediately following the Davis Inlet crash. Nor did it investigate the incident (it wasn’t until 2002, after Danford submitted a report, that Jaspar’s licence was suspended). The accident report released by the Transportation Safety Board in 2001 stated, “In certain areas of commercial operations, the safety oversight efforts of Transport Canada have been somewhat ineffective.” As a result of these findings, in June of that year the tsb issued Recommendation A01-01, which Danford calls one of the most important safety regulations in years. It urged that “the Department of Transport undertake a review of its safety oversight methodology, resources and practices particularly as they relate to smaller operators and those operators who fly in or into remote areas to ensure that air operators and crews consistently operate within the safety regulations.”

When he checked the government database that tracks Transport Canada’s responses to tsb recommendations (which the department is required to submit within ninety days), Danford found that the department was on record as having satisfied Recommendation A01-01. One of the initiatives cited as proof was a plan to implement a new safety protocol known as SMS. Another involved the hiring of a consulting firm to conduct a comprehensive review of the department’s safety oversight program for commercial operations.

Danford went looking for a copy of the review. And that, he says, is when the trouble began. His superiors told him to leave it alone; one, he says, referred to it as “worthless.” Eventually, he located the report — conducted by Montreal’s dmr Consulting Group at a cost to taxpayers of $690,000 — and discovered that it had nothing to do with Recommendation A01-01. “Transport Canada lied to Parliament,” he says.

His attempts to bring the situation to light made for some heated discussions. He had his mental health questioned, was arrested for uttering threats, and was ultimately forced to resign in 2004. The days that followed were dark ones, and he didn’t emerge until three years after his resignation, when a friend encouraged him to testify before Parliament’s Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure, and Community. Danford managed to get himself on the agenda for a review of Bill C-6, An Act to Amend the Aeronautics Act — the legislation sanctioning the controversial aviation safety management systems protocol.

The minute he entered the political fray, Stevens found him, and the two have been collaborating ever since. “She’s like a sister to me,” he says. His involvement in the campaign and the relationships it has forged have helped him overcome his anger. “Who knows?” he adds, scuffing the dirt under which 900 cloves lay buried. “If this garlic comes up, maybe I can make a living.”

THE PROTOCOL

Canada’s civil aviation fleet is the world’s second-largest, with close to 3,000 operators. It currently carries upward of 99 million passengers annually — a number that is expected to grow by 40 percent as of 2015. Like airlines in other countries, Canadian carriers are under intense pressure to cut costs and keep planes flying without interruption. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization — the UN agency responsible for supervising the safe and orderly growth of international aviation — the rapid expansion of the industry is making it increasingly difficult to manage safety with traditional methods. The icao has concluded that the solution is safety management systems, and has asked its member states to require airlines to establish them by 2012.

Safety management systems originated in the chemical industry in the early 1980s, with the aim of shifting to a focus on overall processes — that is, the interaction of human, organizational, technical, and environmental factors — rather than individual events. Presumably, this would allow organizations to identify potential hazards early on and take appropriate preventive measures. The approach has since gained favour in other industries. In 2001, for example, the Chrétien government introduced safety management systems into the Canadian rail sector.

Transport Canada has been promoting SMS for the civil aviation industry since at least 1999. One of the leading voices supporting the push is Merlin Preuss, who recently retired after a lengthy tenure as Canada’s director general of civil aviation. Preuss, who declined to be interviewed for this piece, has long maintained that SMS will allow for more thorough identification and resolution of potential problems. He describes the traditional regulatory approach as reactive, and suggests that SMS will make companies more responsive and proactive.

However, NDP MP and former transportation critic Peter Julian believes the experience of Canada’s rail system shows otherwise. “We saw derailments increase,” he says. Indeed, a 2008 report on the rail industry’s safety management policy, quietly tabled in Parliament last year, found that implementation had been inconsistent, and that Transport Canada hadn’t dedicated enough resources to the initiative. More recent data from the Canada Safety Council shows that fifteen major incidents had taken place on Canadian railways between January 7, 2007, and March 5, 2008 — more than in the previous six years combined. “The problem of SMS all along,” says Julian, has been that “theoretically, it’s a more intelligent way of approaching safety because companies are involved as well,” but in reality governments have tended to use the protocol to justify cutbacks.

Transport Canada has already introduced SMS to the business aviation sector, granting rule-setting responsibility to the Canadian Business Aviation Association in 2003. The decision in effect gave an industry trade association and lobby group oversight of the safety of its own members’ aircraft. In 2007, Transport Canada reviewed the changes the association had introduced and found a system plagued with problems. No structured system had been put in place, nor any procedures for cancelling or suspending an airline’s certificate. And some member companies had been operating without safety management protocols for five years.

“It’s the listeriosis of the aviation industry,” Danford says, referring to SMS implementation. Last year’s tainted meat scandal, which resulted in twenty-two deaths, occurred after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency shifted responsibility for food testing to the meat-packing industry. Following the outbreak, Richard Arsenault, a manager at the cfia, said, “It’s like in aviation: we can’t look under each jet engine of an airline, but we can make sure the maintenance service works.” As it turned out, not only had inspectors failed to swab for listeria on the plant floor, they had failed to check company records properly, to ensure that packers had performed the necessary tests and that their results were above board.

Ultimate responsibility for the transition to SMS lies with John Baird, Canada’s minister of transportation and infrastructure. According to a department insider, Baird has been especially wary of allowing civil servants to speak to the media about SMS, a subject the insider acknowledges is a “hot potato” for the ministry. Baird declined repeated requests for an interview, but in a letter to Ottawa’s Hill Times newspaper in March, he wrote, “Safety Management Systems are about adding more accountability to the inspection system, while maintaining the responsibilities of the federal government. In fact, the government continues to conduct independent audits and has access to more information than ever before. What SMS does is add another layer of accountability.” In a written response to an interview question for Baird, Transport Canada’s manager of media relations and monitoring, Patrick Charette, referred to SMS as “another layer of safety.”

“That is an absolute fabrication,” responds retired Alberta judge Virgil Moshansky, an internationally respected aviation authority. Lean and distinguished, the straight-talking former justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench is also a long-time pilot. Nearly two decades ago, that combination of credentials landed him the signature appointment of his career: head of the commission of inquiry into the 1989 Air Ontario crash at Dryden, a commuter airline accident in which twenty-four people died. Though tasked primarily with investigating the causes of the crash, Moshansky saw the commission as an exceptional opportunity for an in-depth review of the entire Canadian aviation system. His groundbreaking 2,000-page report, released in 1992, was arguably the most exhaustive judicial review in Canada’s aviation history. Its findings resulted in a number of significant aviation safety improvements, including stringent new de-icing procedures. It also helped earn him the Order of Canada in 2004, for singular dedication to enhancing aviation safety.

Moshansky now fears the gains he helped win are being eroded. Canada is the only country in the world introducing SMS without maintaining regulatory oversight,” he says from his Calgary home. He alleges that implementation of the new system is motivated primarily by budget concerns. “Transport Canada management is well rewarded for cost cutting,” he says. “And they save money by cutting the number of inspectors.”

He also notes that the government’s civil aviation inspectorate is significantly smaller than it was at the time of the Dryden inquiry, and has grave doubts that Transport Canada can ensure a safe aviation environment for the travelling public as a result. The department’s solution to this shortfall, he says, has been to axe its oversight programs, notably its national audit program. Under that system, cancelled a few years ago, federal inspectors conducted detailed checks and on-site monitoring of airline operations, meaning they boarded planes, rode along on flights, and studied maintenance logbooks. Moshansky’s paper also mentions a November 2006 directive from Transport Canada to its inspectors, which instructed that no enforcement action be taken against an SMS-covered enterprise except in rare circumstances. The judge tells of receiving confidential notes from the department’s inspectors expressing serious concerns about these trends. “The time is past due for a commission of inquiry to investigate the state of aviation in this country,” he says.

Last year, the Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser, examined Transport Canada’s handling of air transportation safety. In her annual report to Parliament in May 2008, she commended the department for its leadership in introducing safety management systems, noting that Canada is one of the first countries in the world to do so in the aviation sector. However, she also raised a number of concerns. In reallocating resources from traditional oversight activities to SMS activities, she wrote, “the Department did not document risks, such as the impact of the transition on oversight of air transportation safety, or identify actions to mitigate the risks. Nor did it forecast the overall costs of managing the change. In addition, it has not measured the impact of shifting resources from traditional oversight to the new approach.”

Fraser later told a parliamentary committee that “Transport Canada could not demonstrate to us that it is carrying out a sufficient number of inspections during the transition.” She also noted that the number of inspectors and engineers in the department has decreased by 8 percent in the past five years, that “Transport Canada has not yet identified how many inspectors and engineers it needs, with what competencies, during and after the transition,” and that there is a “risk that the Department will not be able to recruit the people it needs in a timely manner.”

Greg Holbrook, former national chair of the Canadian Federal Pilots Association — the bargaining organization representing approximately 470 professional pilots who work as Transport Canada inspectors, tsb investigators, and civil air navigation professionals — asserted in an interview earlier this year (prior to taking a job as a Transport Canada inspector himself) that the International Civil Aviation Organization never intended for safety management systems to replace regulatory monitoring. “It’s like jumping into the water without a life preserver,” he said. He further contended, in concert with Moshansky, that SMS implementation wasn’t about safety. “If we go back to the documentation Transport Canada put together in 2001 [the same time Recommendation A01-01 was issued],” he said, “the proposal to implement SMS was justified to senior staff based on saving dollars, reducing the number of employees, and ultimately reducing the liability to the minister of transport.”

As pilots working in safety and enforcement at Transport Canada retire, he continued, the government is replacing them with “accountants” focused on inspecting paperwork rather than planes. His members were concerned. A survey commissioned by the cfpa in 2007 showed that while almost all respondents thought SMS could improve aviation safety in theory, two-thirds said that SMS as it was being implemented by Transport Canada would increase the likelihood of an aviation accident. One surveyed federal employee complained, “If the general public knew the amount of decisions made by Transport Canada supervisors regarding the safety of the air travel system in this country who are not professional members of the aviation community there would be a mass revolt.”

THE HUSH-UP

Transport Canada’s below-the-radar implementation of SMS has underscored long-standing concerns about the secretive nature of the department. In a 2007 paper presented to the Royal Aeronautical Society, Justice Moshansky revealed for the first time the challenges his commission faced during its three-year investigation into the Air Ontario crash in Dryden. Among other revelations, he wrote that the commission had contended with the sheltering of evidence, a lack of access to witnesses, widespread opposition, and threats of a Federal Court injunction by Transport Canada counsel for allegedly going beyond the terms of his mandate.

Twenty years on from the inquiry, he noted, “the public still continues to be without direct representation in aviation concerns. When the system breaks, the executive branch of government determines causality and identifies violations of legislative branch requirements. No one accountable to the public acts to establish the basis and appropriateness of these requirements and whether executive branch actions are sufficient and competently performed.” The result, according to Moshansky’s paper, is that “reporters and investigators are often unaware of significant aspects known only to airline safety managers.”

None of this surprises Robb Cribb, a reporter with the Toronto Star and former head of the Canadian Association of Journalists. Speaking from Toronto, he described Transport Canada as “one of the most resistant ministries when it comes to public accountability.” Cribb worked alongside colleagues from the Hamilton Spectator and the Kitchener-Waterloo Record on a major investigation into Canada’s aviation industry, published over 2006 and 2007. He and his fellow journalists were forced to wait four years for aviation accident data they requested from Transport Canada in 2001. It wasn’t until 2005, after they took their case to Canada’s information commissioner, and just days before the two sides were scheduled to go to court over the matter, that Transport Canada finally released the information. “I was astounded at how far they would go to protect data that is readily available in the US,” says Fred Vallance-Jones, a twenty-four-year veteran journalist who worked with Cribb on the investigation.

Last year, the CAJ nominated Transport Canada for its Code of Silence Award, for “proposed draconian secrecy provisions in amendments to the Aeronautics Act” — the same legislation that includes SMS. According to the CAJ, “If implemented, these will see a veil of secrecy fall over all information reported by airlines about performance, safety violations, aviation safety problems and their resolution.” Under the proposed legislation, voluntary reporting about safety-related incidents — including material from flight data recorders and self-reported violations — will remain confidential. Transport Canada argues that these measures are a necessary cornerstone of trust in a successful SMS. However, such legislation allows the department to shield information from public scrutiny by designating safety reports as “mandatory exclusions” under the Access to Information Act. Safety reports would therefore not be subject to access to information requests; they could never be released, nor reviewed by the Access to Information commissioner.

Most troubling of all to Transport Canada’s detractors, however, is that it is moving ahead with SMS even though the Conservatives have twice failed to pass supporting legislation in the House of Commons. “This is just contrary to democracy,” says the NDP’s Peter Julian. “One of the oldest rules of Parliament is that the government may not act without the legislative authority granted by the House of Commons and the Senate.” With opposition mounting, it has become unlikely that Bill C-7 will be reintroduced.

Transport Canada’s Patrick Charette responds to such complaints by saying, “Legislative powers are already in place for SMS expansion.” And indeed, the Aeronautics Act allows Transport Canada to introduce amendments to Canadian aeronautics regulations without parliamentary approval. Critics of SMS have therefore turned to the only recourse they feel they have left: capturing the public’s attention.

THE SUMMIT

This past April, Kirsten Stevens orchestrated an unprecedented gathering of parliamentarians, professional pilots, aviation experts, accident survivors, victims’ families, and whistle-blowers on Parliament Hill. The purpose was a round-table discussion on the decline of air safety in Canada. Fourteen people spoke for more than three hours on the crisis facing Canadian aviation, among them Stevens, Hugh Danford, Peter Julian, Greg Holbrook, and Jonathan Huggett, as well as representatives from the Canada Safety Council, Teamsters Canada, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform, and Canadians for Accountability. At a press conference afterward, NDP transportation critic Dennis Bevington remarked, “From what I heard, this is a disaster waiting to happen. Transport Canada and the Transportation Safety Board have developed a culture of secrecy, where whistle-blowers are persecuted and fatal accidents are seen as just a cost of doing business.

Also present in Ottawa this year, if a bit earlier in the spring, was a woman named Freda Hancock, the mother of the twenty-two-year-old pilot killed in the Davis Inlet crash that first attracted Hugh Danford’s attention. The 1,500-kilometre flight west from her tiny Labrador community was the first time in the decade since her son’s death that the soft-spoken, elegant woman had found the strength to speak personally with the former Transport Canada inspector. Hancock said that when he first contacted her, five years after the crash, she wasn’t able to hear what he was telling her — that the system had killed her son. “They’re the people who were supposed to protect you and keep you safe, and you realize they failed you,” she said from Danford’s home, where she was staying. “I took all of this for granted. I didn’t stop to think that somebody wasn’t doing their job.”

In the wake of the round table, Danford was left feeling optimistic that the hardship he’d inflicted on his family and himself might not have been in vain. “All 900 heads of garlic came up,” he said in a recent phone conversation. He’d just mailed a box of bulbs from his harvest to Stevens, who was still putting in full days on her campaign. She’d just launched SafeSkies.ca,designed as a virtual rallying point for aviation safety advocates, and a watchdog for transparency and public accountability at Transport Canada. “We need people who are willing to stand up and be vocal and tell the truth,” she told me, “or we’ll see more victims — like those at Davis Inlet, like those at Dryden, like those at Wapiti, like those in my accident. It’s people like me who can remind everyone why it’s so important to do it right the first time.”

Link to original article from The Walrus.

Thu Sep 17, 2009 8:30am EDT

HOOFDDORP, The Netherlands, September 17 /PRNewswire/ -- The largest
single cause accelerating the downward trend of aviation safety is the
increase in the number of regulatory breaches by airlines remaining
uncorrected. This startling fact is difficult to comprehend, particularly as
recent aircraft accident reports have cited weak regulatory oversight being a
major contributory factor.
    With recent safety related events in the United States leading to an
admission by the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) that its oversight of
airlines had not been to the required standard, AEI must, due to similar
European incidents, pose the question whether EASA, the European Agency
tasked with implementing the highest common standards, is actually "fit for
purpose".
    This is just one of the serious issues on the agenda when engineers from
all over the world meet in Varna, Bulgaria, from the 23rd until the 26th
September for Aircraft Engineers International's 37th Annual Congress.
    Investigations by AEI affiliates revealed that airlines are deliberately
abusing aviation regulations in order to reduce costs. Recently AEI raised
the issue of pilots not reporting aircraft defects as they occurred, but
rather when convenient for the airline. These concerns were confirmed by both
EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency) and SAFA (Safety Assessment of Foreign
Aircraft programme), yet despite this, affiliates continue to observe
malpractice. This arrogant behaviour highlights both a total disregard for
passenger safety and a belief by the operator that such dangerous behaviour
generally carries no risk of any consequence.
    AEI's Secretary General commented that "it is an extremely worrying time.
With everybody currently suffering the effects of a global financial
meltdown, investment in maintenance and safety has also been targeted for
savings and this is completely unacceptable." AEI are also concerned about
the rapid increase in the widespread abuse of the Aircraft Minimum Equipment
List. This list contains information on which aircraft systems may be
unserviceable for flight and which ones may not. It is becoming evident that
to save money airlines are cutting corners and taking risks by allowing
continued operation of aircraft with improperly diagnosed faults. AEI are
convinced that such behaviour was a causal factor in both the recent Spanair
and Turkish Airlines accidents.
    AEI further believes that national aviation regulators must start to act
instead of maintaining their current stand-off attitude. This would require
an immediate halt to the current regulatory trend of appeasing operator's
demands for lighter regulation. National airworthiness authorities if genuine
about safety being paramount must move away from paper auditing and become
more hands on.
    AEI's annual congress will be taking a closer look at these issues in
order to find ways of ensuring this negligence will not go unpunished. AEI's
intention at congress is to increase awareness of this downward trend in
passenger safety then pressurize national airworthiness authorities and EASA
into acting quickly where airlines are clearly failing to meet their basic
safety targets.
    A press conference will be held at 11:00 on the 26th September in the
Golden Tulip Hotel in Varna.

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS109068+17-Sep-2009+PRN20090917

Opposition wants Auditor-General called in after inspectors warned of fictitious accounting inside department

FAA: Southwest operating 40-plus 737s with uncertified parts

Southwest Airlines and US FAA officials met yesterday to discuss an agency inspector's recent discovery that SWA is operating more than 40 737s with parts produced by an uncertified vendor, a finding that led to the Aug. 22 grounding of the aircraft from early morning to 3 p.m.

"FAA, Boeing and Southwest all agreed [by the afternoon of Aug. 22 that] our aircraft were safe to operate with the parts as they were," an SWA spokesperson told ATWOnline. The agency confirmed to this website that use of the parts does not create an immediate safety issue, but added that permission granted to the airline to continue operating the 737s is for 10 days only, giving SWA a brief reprieve to find a more permanent solution.

The parts in question are exhaust gate assembly hinge fittings, which deflect engine exhaust from wing flaps. A maintenance company that neither FAA nor SWA identified apparently replaced the parts with hinge fittings produced by a vendor that has not gained FAA certification for the parts. The issue was first revealed by The Wall Street Journal late Tuesday.

SWA's latest confrontation with FAA comes fewer than six months after it agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine to settle an enforcement action stemming from operating 46 737 Classics for nine days in March 2007 after it had disclosed to the agency that the aircraft were in noncompliance with an airworthiness directive (ATWOnline, March 3). Disclosure of that episode led to allegations that FAA inspectors in Dallas were too "cozy" with SWA.

by Christine Boynton and Aaron Karp

http://www.atwonline.com/news/story.html?storyID=17674

Released by the Canadian Press on August 23, 2009

By Terri Theodore

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Proponents predict it will make air travel in Canada safer than ever. Critics call it a flight plan for disaster.

A controversial new regulatory system that forces the aviation industry to enforce its own safety standards has some accusing Ottawa of abdicating responsibility for ensuring the safety of Canadian passengers, citing tragic experiences in Canada's rail industry as cautionary tales.

For nearly a decade, rail safety in Canada has been governed by a so-called safety management system. Companies are responsible for devising their own safety plans according to regulatory standards and must ensure that their day-day operations conform.

During that period, however, several accidents took place that were blamed on faulty rail-safety systems, including a runaway train in 2006 that killed two railway workers.

"It's like the fox running the henhouse," said Virgil Moshansky, a former judge whose investigation into the deadly Air Ontario crash in 1989 in the northwestern Ontario town of Dryden, led to major changes in Canada's aviation industry.

"It seems that Transport Canada, or the government, or both, need a major disaster to happen before they take action."

Moshansky headed up the inquiry that probed the crash that killed 24 people when ice buildup on the wings sent the plane careening into the ground, where it burst into flames and broke apart.

As part of the changes, a federal program to audit airline safety procedures has been cancelled and Transport Canada intends to stop regulating the frequency of inspections.

Transport Canada inspectors won't enforce safety regulations for companies with their own safety management systems. They will simply inspect safety reports written by the companies themselves.

Federal legislation that would have enshrined the changes into law - opposition parties aggressively opposed the bill - died when last year's federal election was called. The changes will instead be made through regulations, which do not require the approval of Parliament.

That will leave it up to aviation companies to devise their own safety policies, identify risks and make employees aware of the need for safety.

Proponents of the safety-management doctrine say that's the point.

By requiring airlines to create and police their own safety systems, with regulatory authorities as the backup, safety measures are enhanced, rather than diminished, they argue.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency considered the international authority on civil aviation, notes that when such a system is working properly, it adds an extra layer of safety.

The ICAO has developed safety-system guidelines for nearly 200 member countries, including Canada, which is considered one of the leaders in its implementation.

Under the plan, operators, manufacturers, regulatory bodies and investigative agencies work together in a proactive, preventative system at all levels of an operation.

In Canada, large airline operators, their maintenance companies, principal airports and air traffic controllers already operate that way, said Chris Day, press secretary for Transportation Minister John Baird.

Small operators, their maintenance providers, flight training operations, companies that certify aircraft and aircraft makers will soon follow, with Transport Canada expecting the system to be fully implemented by 2015.

"This is about promoting safety, limiting risk, preventing incidents before they happen," said Day.

The regulations are being changed to match what's happening already, he added.

But even as the airline industry grows, there are fewer and fewer government inspectors.

"They (Transport Canada) have delegated the oversight function and enforcement function to the airlines themselves," Moshansky said.

Critics agree that airlines and railways must take principal responsibility for making sure passengers and crew are safe. But they also need the support of Transport Canada inspections and audits, they say.

The unions that represent Canada's inspectors say the system is being used as an excuse to reduce their numbers and to remain at arm's length from liability after accidents.

Kerry Williams, national vice-president with the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees, said there are 130 inspector positions vacant in Canada.

"This is one way to eliminate those vacancies in the stroke of a pen."

The number of inspectors over the last few years has dropped by 15 per cent while the aviation industry has grown by 50 per cent, reducing the role of inspectors to little more than "box tickers," he added.

Greg Holbrook, the chairman of the Canadian Federal Pilots Association, which represents pilot inspectors, said the government saw the system as a money-saver from the start.

"Really, what (this) is all about is about getting Transport (Canada) off the hook," Holbrook said.

"They haven't been able to do their job for a number of years because they don't have enough people and they don't have enough money to do it."

A Transport Canada plan backs up that claim.

Written eight years ago, the document says relying on companies for safety systems cuts costs and jobs and results in less "regulatory burden, Crown liability, oversight requirements."

Said Moshansky: "It seems that safety always gives way to the bottom line with Transport Canada. There are countless examples of this."

Baird himself wasn't available for an interview, but Transport Canada spokesman Brad McNulty said the agency is confident the program will only improve safety.

"Transport Canada is confident (safety management systems) will help save lives by preventing accidents," he said in an email to The Canadian Press.

That confidence isn't borne out by the experience of the rail industry.

The Transportation Safety Board, which investigates rail, air and marine incidents, has cited several accidents that were a direct result of a breakdown in that industry's self-managed safety system.

Tom Dodd and Don Falkner clung to a runaway CN train equipped with ineffective brakes as it plunged over a British Columbia cliff three years ago, taking them to their deaths.

The safety board concluded earlier this year that the choice of an engine with brakes not meant for mountainous terrain was made for "financial reasons, rather than safety reasons," contrary to the railway's own policy.

In August 2005, a defective rail set off an environmental disaster in Wabamun Lake west of Edmonton when 700,000 litres of thick crude oil spilled into the lake. The board criticized CN's rail maintenance and its dangerous goods emergency response plan in a report on the derailment.

Just days later, a train derailed along the Cheakamus River near Squamish, B.C., spilling caustic soda into the river, killing hundreds of thousands of fish. Again, the board blamed violations of the safety management system.

CN's policies were also cited as a factor in a fiery wreck in August 2007 in Prince George, B.C., and in a January 2007 derailment in Montmagny, Que., when four cars containing sulphuric acid derailed, but didn't spill.

A review of the industry's safety management policy released in 2008 concluded that the implementation of the policy had been inconsistent across the country and said Transport Canada hadn't dedicated enough resources to oversee it.

Federal auditor general Sheila Fraser also warned the government in a 2008 report that Transport Canada's transition to aviation safety management systems "had several weaknesses."

Fraser said the department didn't forecast expected costs for the transition, document potential risks or suggest mitigating actions and had no plan in place to evaluate the impact. She also warned there was no strategy in place to hire specialized people with skills gained on the job.

As a result of the recommendations in the rail safety review, McNulty said Transport Canada would be hiring 20 more inspectors for rail over the next three years.

While there are only a few dozen rail companies operating in Canada, there are more than 2,300 air operators certified to fly here.

Emilie Therien, past president of the Canada Safety Council, said the safety change in the airline industry will make Transport Canada a "toothless tiger" when it comes to enforcing safety.

"The safety level established by the carrier - whether it's rail or air - may not be the same one that was established by Transport Canada before," he said in an interview.

Hugh Danford, a former civil aviation inspector for the department, agreed, saying aviation travel is about profit and there's always a balance between money and safety.

"And that's why the (safety management system) won't work because they're putting that balance in the hands of the people who profit."

Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Original Article from the Canadian Press

Watching the news unfold about the fatal Colgan Air crash in Buffalo this past February, I cannot help but be reminded that all the issues they are discussing are reflected here in the Canadian aviation industry.  Issues of fatigue, pay and training have been long-standing here as well, and only worsened by the world financial crisis.  Knowing that air taxis, feeder airlines and other small aircraft operations will always be the place to get the hours required to move up the “food chain”, one would think that the FAA and TCCA would pay more attention to these sectors. 

My sincere hope is that Canada’s government will learn from the US experience, and insist upon a (quasi-) judicial inquiry into our own system of aviation safety oversight.

Updated: 05/15/09 10:59 AM

SPECIAL REPORT: INVESTIGATING FLIGHT 3407

How did complacency turn into catastrophe?

By Michael Beebe and Jerry Zremski

NEWS STAFF REPORTERS

WASHINGTON — Federal investigators wrapped up three days of federal hearings Thursday into the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407, without answering the question of how the final 30 seconds of the flight went from complacency to catastrophe, as one National Transportation Safety Board member put it.

How did a seemingly normal flight suddenly lose so much speed — from 182 knots to 130 knots — that it caused the air-craft’s stall-warning alarm to sound? And why did the pilots both take actions that experts say only worsened the problem and caused the plane to crash Feb. 12 in Clarence Center, killing 50 people?

Mark V. Rosenker, the acting NTSB chairman, pledged to the families and other loved ones who attended the hearings, or watched on the Internet or in simulcasts in Buffalo and Newark, N. J., where the flight originated, that his agency will find the answers.

“We are going to find out what happened here,” Rosenker said at the end of the hearings, “and I can assure you this will be a comprehensive report, with determination of probable cause, and recommendations will follow that, if implemented, will prevent this from happening again.”

Rosenker’s agency has investigated past fatal accidents, found the cause and made recommendations, only to see the Federal Aviation Administration delay or study them further.

He and fellow panel members grilled the final three witnesses, all FAA executives, about those past recommendations that safety board members say have been ignored.

Rosenker is confident that it won’t happen this time.

He said a Senate hearing into the cause of the crash will take place June 10, the new nominee to head the FAA will face confirmation hearings, and the FAA’s charter is coming up in Congress for renewal. New York’s congressional delegation has pledged to tie all of that into the Flight 3407 investigation.

“I’m optimistic,” Rosenker said. “I think we will get a series of changes because of this public hearing, and the attention we have received in the last three days.”

It was unwanted attention for Colgan Air, the regional carrier that operated Flight 3407; the Airline Pilots Association, the pilots union that just won a contract to represent Colgan pilots six weeks before the crash; and the regional airline industry.

Much of America learned for the first time that regional carriers now make up half of the nation’s airline flights.

Passengers aboard Flight 3407 bought their tickets from Continental Airlines, without knowing that Continental subcontracts the flights to Colgan Air, which is owned by Pinnacle Airlines.

The hearings brought out the low pay scales for regional airlines. Flight 3407’s first officer, Rebecca L. Shaw, Colgan executives testified at the hearings, was paid only $16,000 a year, and at one time had to take a second job at a coffee shop. Colgan later said its average pay for a first officer is $24,000.

How could Shaw, 24, who commuted from her home in Washington State, afford to rent an apartment in Newark on that salary, board member Kathyrn O’Leary Higgins asked.

She obviously couldn’t. To start off her shift, Shaw commuted from Seattle to Memphis, Tenn., on a FedEx red-eye flight, slept for four hours in a pilots lounge, and then caught a flight to Newark on the day of her flight to Buffalo, where it is believed she slept in the crew room.

Fatigue management, a key problem in an industry with 16-hour duty days, took up a large part of the hearings.

Flight 3407’s pilot, Capt. Marvin Renslow, 47, who came to flying as a second career, had to take a job stocking shelves in a Tampa, Fla., supermarket before he got hired at Colgan.

Renslow commuted from Tampa, and there is no record that he had an apartment or that he rented hotel rooms in Newark. It’s unknown where he slept on the night before the flight to Buffalo, but he had logged onto the computer in the Newark crew room at 3 a. m.

Colgan has stressed throughout the hearings that it has an excellent safety record and that its pilots are trained as well as any of the major air carriers.

“We want to know what happened as much as anyone else does and remain committed to do everything we can to prevent future accidents,” Colgan spokesman Joe F. Williams said at the hearing’s close.

“We are totally committed to safety and are determined to work closely with our industry colleagues and regulators to reinforce this primary industry objective.”

It was another rough day of testimony for Colgan and its Flight 3407 pilots Thursday as board member Deborah A. P. Hersman, who seemed to ask the most telling questions during the hearings, questioned a NASA scientist who studies pilot distractions.

“I think the crew went from complacency to catastrophe in 20 seconds,” Hersman said. “It seems like they were discombobulated.”

She said co-pilot Shaw put the airplane’s flaps up, which experts said was the wrong thing to do.

Renslow yoked the control back, causing the nose of the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 twin-engine turboprop plane to pitch up, instead of putting the nose down to recover from the stall, she said.

“The room’s on fire at this point,” she said to Dr. Robert Key Dismukes of NASA’s Ames Research Center. Wouldn’t it make sense, she said, for aircraft manufacturers to install warnings that the aircraft is losing that much speed that quickly before the “stick shaker” alarm goes off?

“It would be sort of like a fire alarm,” she said. “The stick shaker is more like being in a room on fire.”

Dismukes, who spoke at length about what causes pilots to lose attentiveness, agreed with Hersman that for all the other warnings and chimes in a cockpit, this seems like one that makes sense.

Dismukes told the panel that he has spent 20 years studying such issues as pilot attention and holds pilot licenses from gliders to the 737, so he could appreciate their problems more and experience them firsthand.

The NASA exert also was surprised by the actions of Renslow and Shaw when the stick shaker went off, signaling that the plane was on the verge of a stall because insufficient air was flowing over its wings.

Dismukes said the only way for pilots to react to such emergencies was continual comprehensive training so that when it happens, they can automatically know what to do. Otherwise, he said, it’s like having to consult a book, not doing what needs to be done immediately.

He agreed with questioners who wondered whether stall training for pilots should be done the way it is now. Currently, pilots know they are going to encounter a stall in the simulator, and the element of surprise is gone.

Dismukes also agreed that having pilots encounter stalls when flying on autopilot would much better mimic the sudden terror that Renslow and Shaw experienced when the alarm went off as they approached Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

“Surprise and stress are problematic,” Dismukes said. “Even experienced pilots flail around.”

Dismukes said the pilot and co-pilot of Flight 3407 could have fallen victim to “automation complacency” — that is, putting so much faith in the autopilot that they were not paying enough attention.

“You’re a step removed from physical control of the aircraft,” Dismukes said.

Noting that the period just before landing is “one of the busiest periods in general” for flight crews, Dismukes noted that a lot was happening all at once as Flight 3407 descended toward Buffalo. The control tower was contacting the cockpit just as Renslow and Shaw were preparing for landing, adding one more distraction.

Meanwhile, the plane lost 50 knots of speed in 20 seconds — and the crew did not notice that the plane had decelerated to a dangerous level.

The plane’s stall-warning system activated when it fell to a speed of 130 knots. Sources with knowledge of the Q400 said that when flying a relatively full load in icy conditions, pilots generally would not want to slow the aircraft to much below 140 knots.

“I don’t see any evidence that he [Renslow] understood the situation he was in,” Dismukes said.

Dismukes noted that responding to a stall is much different in real life than it is for pilots training in a simulator.

Pilots have about 3 seconds to respond correctly to the stick shaker, which is far easier for pilots who are expecting a mock stall in training.

“If you’re expecting a stall, 3 seconds is plenty,” Dismukes said. “If you’re not expecting it, the response would be highly variable. Some [pilots] would respond correctly in 3 seconds. A lot would not.”

But safety board member Higgins noted that an earlier stall warning — an illuminated red barber pole — came on but went unnoticed.

“There was a warning,” she said. “It just was not recognized.”

Majority of aircraft in Canada using outmoded emergency beacons

OTTAWA – Ottawa's push to let air carriers police the safety of their own operations marks a "dismantling" of regulatory oversight in this country and is a disaster in the making, a Parliament Hill forum has heard.

In sometimes moving testimony, pilots, union officials and relatives of air crash victims yesterday gave a damning condemnation of Transport Canada's ongoing move to shift responsibility for safety onto the airlines and air taxi operators.

While federal officials have claimed it will add a layer of scrutiny, it comes as Transport Canada is cutting back its own audits and inspections of aviation companies, the forum was told.

"This is a plan about making it look good ... in fact, the actual activities and actions of oversight will not occur," said Greg Holbrook, national chair of the Canadian Federal Pilots Association, whose ranks include pilot inspectors with Transport Canada.

The federal government has been introducing "safety management system," to sectors of the aviation industry, a process that lets individual firms rather than federal inspectors oversee their operations.

Transport Canada officials reversed course this week on a controversial aviation safety issue. The department now says no Canadian airline asked Transport Canada aircraft inspectors to sign confidentiality agreements about potential safety problems "in the last several years."

This contradicts a statement by Transport Canada spokesperson Maryse Durette, who said in an email to a Canwest News Services reporter last week that "Transport Canada has only recently been made aware of such requests being made and that agreements may have been signed (by TC inspectors). We have clarified with (airlines) where the agreements were requested that they are not required."

"Of course, no such (confidentiality) request would be acceptable," Chris Day, press attaché to Transport Minister John Baird, said in a telephone interview this week.

Asked about the discrepancy in a series of brief discussions, Durette said simply: "when I wrote to (Canwest), the information I had was current." She would not expand on that statement or say what had changed in the intervening time.

The issue is particularly sensitive, coming in the middle of the implementation over several years of a new safety management system (SMS) for the Canadian airline industry.

There's even a dispute as to whether the new system itself is a de facto form of deregulation or a reinforcement of safety procedures benefiting the travelling public.

Day said that the SMS is "an added layer of protection" for flyers. But the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees, which represents Transport Canada inspectors, notes that one of the provisions of the system calls for airlines to conduct safety inspection of their aircraft themselves rather than by inspectors, as has been the case traditionally.

UCTE national vice-president Kerry Williams disputed Day's assertion. "It is definitely not an additional layer of safety, it's a totally unproven system. It's based on what the airlines tell the regulator about their own operations."

Day countered that the airlines are bound by exacting regulations and stringent reporting standards.

"Given a choice between commercial and safety considerations, we will always opt for safety," Day said.

But Williams compared aviation regulations with the recent listeria outbreak in the food business, saying that Canadians would be shocked to find out that flying safety procedures are conducted by the airlines rather than by the national regulator.

"Who in the heck knew they weren't inspecting our meat?" Williams asked. "We commissioned a survey by Praxicus - Stephen Harper's polling firm - which polled 800 people across the country between Jan. 2 and 5, and 80 per cent were against airlines being the sole inspector of airplanes. Most Canadians don't know this is happening."

WestJet Airlines spokes-person Richard Bartrem did not return calls. Air Canada spokesperson Isabelle Arthur said: "(SMS) is an industry-wide initiative" and referred questions to the umbrella group representing Canada's commercial carriers, the National Airlines Council of Canada. NACC spokesperson Brigitte Hébert did not return more than a dozen calls seeking comments and explanations.

But one U.S. aviation safety consultant said that airlines asking government inspectors to sign confidentiality agreements is unheard of in the U.S. - and dangerous.

"The job of the regulator is not to work with the airlines, their job is to ensure public safety," said Jeffrey Roy, an aviation safety consultant in Longmont, Colo. He added that in his 21 years as an inspector for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, "I was never asked to sign such an agreement and I never encountered anyone who was."

In fact, Roy says that asking for confidentiality smacks of the backsliding in safety standards that occurred in the U.S. airline industry as deregulation was in vogue, and sternly warned against following this example.

"Last year, we had the Southwest and American (Airlines) and other situations, where incidents came to light showing that (FAA) inspectors had become far too cozy with the airlines. The FAA was not getting enough information out to the public and were letting things slide. That coziness is what you want to prevent."

Christine Collins, president of the UTCE, questioned Transport Canada's credibility on this issue, "saying one thing one week and another the next."

While the department still has nominal oversight responsibility, she said that "there is total confusion in practical terms. Are inspectors inspecting or they box-tickers, just there to (rubberstamp the inspection) checklists filled in by the airlines?"

Proposed amendments to legislation last year would have imposed a total ban on air safety reports, but the amendments died along with the tabled legislation when last year's federal election was called.

fshalom@thegazette.canwest.com

DOT, FAA sued in bid to force air safety changes

By DAVID PORTER – 24 minutes ago

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Airline safety advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday to force the U.S. Department of Transportation to adopt long-standing safety recommendations in the wake of a deadly plane crash in New York earlier this month.

The complaint, brought by Gail Dunham, executive director of the National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation, was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and names Department of Transportation Secretary Ray H. LaHood and Lynne A. Osmus, acting administrator for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Dunham's group says the government is moving too slowly on improving air safety.

The lawsuit seeks to force the government to approve safety measures recommended by the National Transportation Safety Board as far back as the mid-1990s.

The suit accuses the DOT and FAA of continuing to "shirk their duties to the traveling public" by not doing so.

The DOT oversees the FAA, which has the power to put new safety measures in place. The NTSB is an independent investigative body.

Listed in the lawsuit are recommendations made in 1996 that focus on aircraft performance in icing conditions, spurred by the 1994 crash of an American Eagle flight in Roselawn, Ind., that killed 68 people.

Icing has been cited by NTSB investigators as a factor in the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 — a twin turboprop similar to the American Eagle plane — in Clarence, N.Y., on Feb. 12, in which all 49 people on board and one person on the ground were killed. The investigation is expected to take a year or more to determine the cause of the crash.

Dunham was traveling and unavailable Tuesday, but representatives of the group provided details of the lawsuit at a news conference near Newark Liberty International Airport, where Flight 3407 originated.

"We know from experience that holding government accountable and putting the light of sunshine of public disclosure on these pending measures is perhaps the best — and in some cases the only — way to get the necessary changes that we need," said attorney and former DOT Inspector General Mary Schiavo, a frequent critic of the FAA who is representing Dunham.

Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the FAA, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. In an interview with The Associated Press last week, Brown noted that the agency has issued more than 100 safety directives since 1994 requiring specific actions related to icing for existing aircraft.

The NTSB blamed the 1994 American Eagle crash partly on ice accumulated on the plane's wings, and recommended in 1996 that testing requirements for flight certification of all turboprop planes be adjusted to include the specific kind of icing conditions in the Roselawn crash.

The board also recommended that turboprop planes already in use when the testing requirements were in place should be retested and, if necessary, redesigned. But more than 12 years later, those recommendations remain on a "most wanted list" kept by the NTSB of issues it says the FAA has dragged its feet on.

Since the American Eagle crash, the NTSB has partly blamed the FAA's inaction on icing issues for the crash of a turboprop operated by Comair in Monroe, Mich., in 1997 that killed 29 people and a 2005 crash of a Cessna Citation business jet in Pueblo, Colo., in which eight people died.

"We don't know what caused the crash of Continental Connection 3407, but certainly we can say that the NTSB has been recommending that they pass these lessons learned on to operators as they go along," said Don McCune Jr., a retired airline pilot and attorney for a South Carolina-based aviation law firm.

Dunham's lawsuit also seeks to force the FAA to take action on runway safety recommendations that the NTSB has made, such as installing "moving map" displays in all cockpits to alert pilots if another plane is attempting a takeoff from the wrong runway.

The FAA has undertaken several initiatives in recent years to boost runway safety, but a General Accounting Office report last fall rated the risk of runway collisions "still high."

On December 5^th, 2008, USA Today reported “Three Airlines Drop Self-Reporting Safety Program”.  As unions charge “that the airlines have gone back on their word and unfairly punished pilots who voluntarily disclosed problems”, this does not bode well for the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP). 

In 1977, the Washington based Institute for Policy Studies launched the Government Accountability Project (GAP) in an effort to support individuals who come forward, risking their jobs and careers, by challenging wrongdoings for the benefit of public safety.  The following is an excerpt from “The Whistleblower’s Survival Guide:  Courage Without Martyrdom”, first printed in 1997.

“Structurally, corporate voluntary disclosure programs are vulnerable to the now-familiar conflict of interest inherent when an institution is responsible for disclosing its own misconduct.  To illustrate, the investigations often are conducted by attorneys whose professional duty is to the client corporation – rather than to the public.  The same attorney who interviews whistleblowers and serves as a liaison between the corporation and the government during a voluntary disclosure may later act as counsel for the defense in the event of enforcement action.

As a result, voluntary disclosure programs have failed to serve as an effective substitute for external oversight, and too often serve as a shield for liability.”

In Canada, this program is an integral part of “Safety Management Systems”, and it is working its way into Transport Canada’s regulatory framework.  Despite many years worth of research, government is not recognizing that inadequate protection from repercussions force whistleblowers into silence.

“The GAP has identified six basic principles that we believe are needed for any meaningful system of whistleblower protection and corporate and government accountability.  Whistleblowers must:

1.        Have a legal right to protection against discrimination for challenging illegality or violations of the public trust through lawful disclosures, without having to obtain advance permission, as well as the same protection for refusing to violate the law;

2.       Have access to courts in which the decisionmakers have judicial independence from the political process, and be entitled to a jury trial;

3.       Have remedies that hold individual harassers personally liable and subject to discipline, so that an employer or supervisor has something to lose by retaliating;

4.       Gain access to legal shields for following government or professional codes of ethics;

5.       Have the ability to go on the attack against lawlessness by restoring citizen standing to challenge fraud and enforce the law; and

6.       Restore substantive and procedural due process rights for all violations of constitutional rights, even when the government asserts a conflict with national security.”

When will the regulators – both national and international – wake up?  For the safety of our communities, our very lives, we must protect those who seek only to protect us.