The union and the company have been negotiating since July 2007 on a deal to update the current contract, which became amendable on Wednesday.
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The union wants to recover wage concessions made in 2005, which it estimated at more than $200 million per year.

Under federal law, labor contracts in the airline industry don’t expire, and there are legal obstacles before workers can legally go on strike.

Continental has nearly 5,000 pilots, who are represented by the Air Line Pilots Association. Union officials said they have agreements on eight sections of the contract but dozens more are unsettled.

“Our pilots have been working long enough under the concessions of our current contract,” said Jay Pierce, leader of the Continental group within ALPA. “The givebacks that were designed to help keep Continental out of bankruptcy were a loan to secure our futures … and now it is past due.”

Julie King, a spokeswoman for Houston-based Continental, the nation’s fourth-largest airline, said the company would “continue to work closely with our pilot group, as we do with all of our employee groups.”

Flybe flight BE1431 from Cardiff was approaching Charles De Gaulle airport on Tuesday when the captain made the announcement over the tannoy.

A Flybe spokeswoman said there had been dense fog in Paris and the company stood by the pilot’s decision “100%”.

The 62 passengers were put on the next flight to Paris or offered a refund.

The Flybe pilot concerned has 30 years’ commercial aviation experience flying a number of different passenger aircraft types, said the Flybe spokeswoman.

“He has relatively recently transferred his ‘type-rating’ from a Bombardier Q300 to a Bombardier Q400 and has not yet completed the requisite low-visibility training to complete a landing in conditions such as the dense fog experienced in Paris Charles de Gaulle,” she said.

Everyone was totally shocked when he said he couldn’t land in the fog, it caused a bit of a panic
Ronan Boyle, passenger

“The captain therefore quite correctly turned the aircraft around and returned to Cardiff, a decision which the company stands by 100%.

“Aviation is the most highly regulated form of public transport in the United Kingdom. As a result, technical situations like these arise where a pilot with 30 years experience correctly abides by regulatory rules.

“At no point was passenger safety compromised.”

Flybe added that when the pilot took off from Cardiff, the weather at Paris Charles De Gaulle was clear.

Ronan Boyle, from Ballycastle in Northern Ireland, said he was a passenger on the flight, heading for a conference on rural retailing.

He said: “Everyone was totally shocked when he said he couldn’t land in the fog, it caused a bit of a panic as we never knew what was going on and thought it was a little unusual. A lot of people feared for the worst.”

The Civil Aviation Authority described the incident as “quite unusual but probably not unheard of”.

‘Climactic conditions’

“I guess he thought when he initially took off that conditions would be suitable for him to land,” said a spokesman.

“There are different classifications of aircraft and when an aircraft is updated, pilots who have flown an older version have to completely retrain.

“There can be significant differences in terms of how an aircraft is operated.

“Different climatic conditions like fog require a certain level of skill and he probably didn’t have the level of training required for this particular aircraft.”

“We deeply regret this case because it has badly affected Vietnam Airlines’ image and confidence,” said airline spokesman Trinh Ngoc Thanh. “We have decided to suspend him from flying.”

Thanh said Vietnam Airlines instructs its aircrews on forbidden activities before every flight, but admitted that the number of employees involved in similar scandals was increasing.

“We will need to review our rules to limit wrongdoing,” said Thanh.

In May, Vietnam Airlines flight attendant Tran Thanh Phong was arrested by Japanese airport police when he violated customs restrictions by entering the country with brand-name goods valued at more than 10,000 dollars.

In April, pilot Lai Quoc Viet was arrested by Australian police for smuggling 3.4 million Australian dollars from Australia to Vietnam in 2005 and 2006.

In 2007, two flight attendants were detained in South Korea when customs officers found they had illegally brought 300,000 dollars from Vietnam to South Korea.

Pilots who are based at air carrier airports and have not already had a background check and received an ID badge will have to do so next year in order to continue to have access to their airport. Based pilots who have already submitted to the checks will not be affected.

The directive does not change requirements for transient pilots. Transient pilots flying into air carrier airports will continue to be subject to the current escorting and monitoring requirements.

Currently, most airports do not require these checks because of a longstanding security policy that excludes general aviation operations when separated by time and distance from airline areas.

“Pilots have long operated without incident on these airports, and it is surprising that the TSA appears to have implemented such a significant new mandate with no notification or discussion,” said Andy Cebula, AOPA executive vice president of government affairs. “It will have a significant impact on pilots and airports in many small communities across the country.”

He told ET: “We will hire around one dozen more pilots in December including expats,” Mr Aggarwal said. “We have seen expats are more efficient in some cases compared to Indian pilots. The airline has sent back a few Indian pilots due to unsatisfactory results. Local pilots are our first priority, but foreign hands are also welcome in our family,” he added.

It is learnt that SpiceJet will pay foreign pilots Rs 7 lakh per month, including accommodation allowance, double of what it offers its Indian pilots. SpiceJet employs 65-70 expat pilots.

SpiceJet needs more pilots as it is increasing capacity. It plans to increase flights by another 20% over the next two months. It plans to double the frequency in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai routes.

The daily flights will go up to 120 from the existing 98 in 20 cities by the end of this fiscal. The company has also retracted from its earlier decision of returning three aircraft.

SpiceJet’s market share increased from 9.5% in October to 10.8% in November, while its load factor jumped 4% to around 65%. The low-cost airline’s market share swelled from 12.8% in October to 14.7% in November.

“ The company is expected to return to the black with jet fuel prices getting cheaper,” Mr Aggarwal said. The company suffered a loss of nearly Rs 198 crore in Q2 this fiscal. Jet fuel prices have come down 50% in the past two quarters.

Industry experts said SpiceJet has managed to resolve its problems related to cash after the US-based investor WL Ross injected Rs 360 crore into it.

This may help the company in running its operations for at least one year without any cash problem. The domestic airline industry may double its fleet size to 600 aircraft by 2010, if the order placed by the carriers is anything to go by.

So when pilots at JetBlue Airways decided to organize, they rejected the traditional adversarial approach of most airline unions. Instead, they turned to officials with the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, known for its record of winning generous contracts while maintaining a positive relationship with management. That union’s focus on productivity and innovative compensation has helped keep the Dallas-based airline profitable during the past decade while other airlines posted billions in losses.

The Southwest union “has been a great example of the fact that it’s possible to create a collaborative approach with management,” said Mike Sorbie, a JetBlue pilot based in Orlando, Fla., one of the leaders of the organizing effort.

“Southwest has enjoyed a tremendous amount of success and represents one of the most highly unionized airlines in the industry,” he said.

Pilots at JetBlue will vote in January on whether to create the JetBlue Pilots Association. Like SWAPA, it would be an independent union, not affiliated with the nation’s largest pilot group, the Air Line Pilots Association.

“We were looking for an example of success, and the only one that met our definition was SWAPA,” said Bill Evans, a Boston-based JetBlue pilot involved in the organizing drive.

‘A tremendous culture’

JetBlue, a New York-based discount carrier, has had ties to Southwest from its inception. Its founder, David Neeleman, was an executive at Southwest in the 1990s after he sold Morris Air to the carrier. Two years after leaving Southwest, in 2000, he launched JetBlue with a similar business model — a lean, low-cost structure, one-cabin service, a point-to-point route map and flights into cheaper, secondary airports.

What differentiated the airline was its perks. It was the first carrier to provide free seat-back satellite television for every passenger, and its fleet of new airplanes had leather seats and comfortable cabins.

Officials with Dallas/Fort Worth Airport have long tried to lure JetBlue to North Texas, but the airline has no flights here. It does have service in Austin and Houston.

Another difference from Southwest was on the labor front. Southwest is the most unionized airline in the industry, but JetBlue has no union presence. An attempt by baggage handlers to organize in 2006 was unsuccessful.

Earlier this year, Sorbie and Evans began collecting signature cards to trigger a union election. Enough pilots signed on, and in November the JetBlue Pilots Association filed for an election.

The voting will begin Jan. 6, and ballots will be counted Feb. 3.

JetBlue officials have said in a statement that they “believe a direct relationship with the company is in our pilots’ best interests.”

Mike Powers, the airline’s senior vice president and treasurer, said at a recent Credit Suisse airline conference that it was “premature to speculate” on whether the union drive will succeed and how it might affect the airline’s costs or structure.

The pilots stress that the move to organize isn’t based on any animosity with JetBlue’s management, including Chief Executive David Barger. In fact, the two have high praise for the airline’s leadership.

“We have complete faith in our current management and leadership team,” Sorbie said. “We have tremendous culture and have a great relationship between management and the work groups.”

But the pilots do worry that things could change, given the volatile nature of the airline business.

“One day Dave Barger won’t be president of JetBlue,” Sorbie said. He also worries that the airline could be swept up in industry consolidation.

“Pilots don’t usually fare well in mergers and integrations,” he said.

A reasonable approach

But the high-octane labor battles at other airlines worried many pilots, Sorbie said.

“There’s this idea that unionization, almost by design, degrades into an adversarial relationship,” he said. “That’s what we want to avoid.”

Sorbie and Evans approached SWAPA for advice on building a different kind of pilots union. They said they never even considered affiliating with the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots at United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Continental and others.

“I know how hard it is to independent; it’s the road less traveled,” said Karl Kuwitzky, SWAPA’s president. “But they clearly wanted to be different.”

Pilots at Fort Worth-based American Airlines are also represented by an independent union, the Allied Pilots Association. That labor group is embroiled in often-bitter contract negotiations with American.

Kuwitzky attended several organizational meetings and counseled the JetBlue pilots on how to get started. The biggest drawback to an independent union, he said, is the lack of financial support from a larger union.

“You really don’t have any money to start out with,” he said. “So it takes a lot longer to build up your infrastructure.”

But Evans said the benefits of flying solo prevailed. “With a larger union, you can be a small cog in the wheel,” he said. “We’re a kind of unique pilot group and want to stay that way.”

Like their counterparts at Southwest, Sorbie said JetBlue pilots will make the company’s performance a top priority.

“We have to consider not only the current economic realities, but the benefit of helping our company continue to prosper into the future,” Sorbie said. “We’re going to be reasonable in our approach and our expectations.”

He said he hopes that, like SWAPA, the JetBlue Pilots Association can serve as a model for the industry.

Said Evans, “We think we can do something special and unique that others can take a look at.” He said he wants to take SWAPA’s approach “to the next level, and set the bar up another notch.”

Although they don’t have specifics yet on what they would like to see in a contract, one priority is to shorten negotiation time. Airline contracts often take years to forge, because of the restrictions of the Railway Labor Act, which governs airline labor relations.

Protracted negotiations “take an enormous financial toll on the company and the union,” Sorbie said. “It’s a tremendous roller coaster.”

Evans also envisioned a pay scale benchmarked against other pilot groups, similar to how the JetBlue’s executive compensation is structured.

“Our leadership team has taken a reasonable approach to their own compensation, and our pilots appreciate that,” he said.

The pilots are optimistic that the union will be approved in February.

“There’s a real buzz about it, and I’m very optimistic that we’re going to win,” Sorbie said. “I think people realize this won’t be your father’s airline union.”

The executive body of Jet Airways is getting ready to spar with its pilots who are refusing to accept pay cuts and are threatening legal action against the top private carrier.

Last month, Jet Airways, which reported 2Q (July-Sept) loss of Rs.384.50 crore due to decline in passenger traffic and high fuel costs, said all employees, including senior executives, pilots, engineers and commercial staff (including cabin crew) would take a pay cut beginning December.

According to a Jet source, the management proposed a three-tiered pay cut system under which those drawing Rs.5 lakh-plus salary accept a 20 percent cut, while those drawing Rs.2 lakh-plus salary accept a 10 percent cut.

“Those in the Rs.75,000 to Rs.2 lakh bracket would face a 5 percent cut. But the pay cut will not affect those drawing less than Rs.75,000,” the source said.

The carrier’s top executives have already agreed to take a voluntary pay cut of 25 percent December onwards, the source added.

The nation’s top carrier has also opted for “allowance rationalization,” effectively downgrading hotel accommodation and trimming down entertainment and meal allowances for its commercial staff. The company will not also pay overtime dues to its pilots from December.

Though engineers, cabin crew and ground staff have accepted the pay cut proposal, yet the pilots are in no mood to agree.

Under the new pay cut system, the salary of junior pilots will be cut by 10 percent and that of senior pilots by 20 percent.

However, the proposal has been rejected by Indian pilots who are demanding that the carrier should get rid of expatriate pilots first.

According to the Indian pilots, they draw at least 40 percent less salary than expatriate pilots despite having similar experience and qualification and the difference in pay structure has already resulted in dissension in the ranks.

The Indian pilots said the expatriate pilots also get better benefits, including more paid-holidays and allowances.

However, Jet authorities has dismissed the allegations as being untrue and said all the pilots are treated at par.

The authorities also added that it does not give any preferential treatment to expatriate pilots and, in fact, last month, had terminated the services of 35 expatriate pilots who flew Boeing 737-aircraft for the airline.

As on September 30, 2008, it employed a total of 288 expatriate pilots and 748 Indian pilots.

However, the Indian pilots are in no mood to reconcile and have threatened to take legal action against the carrier, saying the pay cut proposal goes against the terms and conditions laid down in their employment contract.

“Some of the cuts go against our employment contract. We are planning to serve a legal notice on the airline,” a senior Indian pilot said, on conditions of anonymity.

“The management has reduced our variables without taking us into confidence which is not acceptable,” he added.

“We are firm in our stand. We will not accept any pay cut, voluntary or otherwise, unless the management does away with expat pilots whose pay packets are much higher than ours,” another pilot said.

Most Indian pilots agree that they are willing to negotiate with the management on pay cut issue but the latter should agree to meet them “half way” and “must accede to our demands on the expat pilots issue.”

But jet authorities remain unfazed. “Let them (pilots) do what they want. The management has taken this step (pay cut) to keep the company out of red. Those who consider themselves to be part of the Jet family have agreed to the proposal. But those who are grumbling are free to leave,” a senior Jet executive said.

According to the executive, the demand of the Indian pilots is unreasonable and the carrier is in no mood to reduce the present number of its expatriate pilots.

The Jet executive said that in international route, expatriate pilots are not accommodated in classy hotels, since they have their home city “close to our hub.” However, when an Indian pilot flies to any international destination, we have to spend a huge amount on their accommodation and other allowances,” he said.

Hit by high jet fuel prices and decline in passenger traffic, Jet Airways has formed an alliance with rival Kingfisher Airlines in fields including fuel management, ground handling, sharing of technical resources and crew for training and cross-utilization on similar aircraft types, in its attempt to switch to leaner business model and cost-optimize its business operations.

Jet Airways has also stopped flights on loss-making routes, delayed taking delivery of new aircraft and has leased out some of its existing aircraft to other carriers.

According to government data, total passengers carried by domestic carriers in November fell 4.2 percent sequentially to 3 million passengers of which Jet Airways carried 19 percent.

As a captain for American Airlines, Filucci flies to Miami to report to his job.

From there, he flies an Airbus A300-600 to places like Panama City, San Jose, Costa Rica, Santa Domingo and the Dominican Republic.

The commute from Wichita to Miami isn’t so bad.

“It’s really an opportunity to catch up on reading,” he said.

Filucci moved to Wichita in January when his wife, Julie, joined Cessna Aircraft as national manager for Cessna Pilot Centers.

Filucci takes the commute in stride.

There are other airline pilots who live near or travel to Wichita and fly to hubs in Denver, Dallas or Atlanta to start work. Filucci must change planes in Dallas or Atlanta to get to Miami.

He points out that there are other airline pilots with long commutes.

“I don’t hold the award for the longest distance,” he said.

“I’ve met commuter pilots in my career who’ve commuted to the East Coast… all the way from Anchorage, Alaska.”

He’s heard of pilots who have married, moved to Europe and commute to the U.S.

Filucci has never missed work because of flight delays on his commutes , but has come close.

Filucci learned to fly while in the Maryland Air National Guard, mainly flying C-130s. He joined American Airlines in 1986.

While he was in the National Guard, there were few job openings at the airlines.

“We used to joke that you had to have at least three lunar landings to get hired,” Filucci said.

Then the industry was deregulated, and there was an explosion of growth. The airlines needed qualified pilots.

Since that time, Filucci has lived through the highs and lows of the airline industry. He’s managed to avoid the furloughs that have hit some other pilots.

Timing is everything.

“It has nothing to do with skill,” he said. “It has everything to do with luck.”

Filucci has traveled the country doing air shows, flying Chinese warbirds in a routine with a partner. When his partner had to quit flying because of health issues, Filucci stopped doing the shows.

He is currently active with the Formation and Safety Team, a group that trains formation flying to pilots of restored vintage aircraft.

He and his wife own a 1946 Globe Swift and are planning to build a home and hangar at the Benton Airpark.

What do you see ahead for the airline industry?

“That’s the question on everyone’s lips right now. There’s going to be some consolidation in the industry. We just saw Northwest and Delta consolidate. In the future there will be more inroads (in the U.S. industry) made by foreign-owned airlines.”

What about air travel?

“Air travel (will) just keep growing and growing and growing. That will happen once we get out of this recession. (It) looks like the population of the world will keep expanding. (And) more people in the world are moving to middle class and moving up. (That will help stimulate) high demand for air travel.”

What advice would you give someone considering an airline pilot career?

“I would just make sure they go in it with their eyes open…. I would tell them it looks like now you’re not going to make as much money and the retirement options are virtually nonexistent….

“If you start with a commuter (airline) these days, which is a typical road young guys take, those guys are making $14,000 to $16,000 (a year) in starting wages. It’s a lot of hard work for very little return.”

Anything else?

“I would tell them if their passion is for aviation, they should go out and earn their keep in the corporate world.”

What do you like best about your profession as a pilot?

“I always thought it was the merging of the left side and the right side of the brain. One part of aviation is the technical and the mathematical side. The other is the art and the beauty of it.”

An air traffic controller raised the alarm when he saw the plane bound for Cheong Ju in Korea speeding along the taxiway and alerted the cockpit crew in time for them to abort take-off.

Santrianto, an Indonesian, told his company he was merely travelling at speed on a taxiway on his way to the north runway and that air traffic controllers had mistaken his approach for an attempted take-off.

However, an investigation by Hong Kong’s Civil Aviation Department concluded the pilot was attempting a take-off and said the incident was caused by “temporary loss of situation awareness” on the part of the flight crew.

Taxiways at Hong Kong International Airport run the length of the runways but are narrower, have distinctive green lighting and, unlike runways, no centre lighting.

A report by the Civil Aviation Department recommends improving the airline’s standard operating procedures and action to “enhance flight crew situation awareness and alertness.”

The report also recommends improvements to taxiway lighting and ground marking systems at the airport.

Hong Kong Airlines spokesman Alex Au confirmed that the two pilots had been dismissed. “It is a fair report,” he said.

“We have already released the two pilots, and we are implementing the recommendations that the CAD made regarding procedures.”

Seven-year-old Hong Kong Airlines, which with sister airline Hong Kong Express flies to 30 cities across Asia, fired a number of senior expatriate pilots early this year.

John Findlay, general secretary of the Hong Kong Aircrew Officers Association, said: “I would urge the Civil Aviation Department to take a long, hard look at what is going on at Hong Kong Airlines.

“The numbers of highly qualified pilots who have been terminated for no apparently justifiable reason is alarming. Public confidence in Hong Kong Airlines has to be assured.”

However, Au said claims that the September incident indicated general poor standards at Hong Kong airlines were “grossly unfair and inappropriate.”

“It is not just the pilots but the environment and the circumstances which led to the incident,” he said.

There have been two previous incidents involving planes attempting to take off from taxiways rather than runways at Hong Kong’s 11-year-old international airport.

Action was taken by the Hong Kong Airport Authority to improve lighting and markings on the airport apron following the last incident in 2007.

Reflecting the slumping economy, airline pilot hiring hit an all-time low in November, adding only 133 new pilot jobs for the month according to AIR, Inc. The airline industry hasn’t seen pilot hiring numbers this low since November 2001, two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Out of the 175 airlines reporting, only 54 of them were hiring. National carriers, who haven’t led in hiring since July of this year, were back on top adding 62 pilots to their flight decks, followed by the Non-Jet Operators with 20 and the Jet Operators finished in third with 13 new pilot positions for the month. For the second month in a row, there was no hiring activity by any of the 15 Major airlines.

Pilot furloughs continued to increase, from 4,052 in October to 4,466 in November.

For whatever jobs that are still out there… AIR, Inc plans to hold an Airline Pilot Job Fair in Atlanta in or around March 2009.

Harold Demuren, director general of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) disclosed, yesterday, at a one day seminar on the effects of alcohol and drugs on aviation personnel.

To be able to monitor the personnel, the agency and other related agencies are to begin random on the spot testing of licensed personnel. The NCAA boss remarked that the nation is burdened with the reality of time, most especially on the decadence in the society, that will if not checked encroach into the safety-critical aviation industry.

“The effects of alcohol and substances of abuse ranges from changes in perception, thought and mood to physiological effects such as elevated heart rate, increased blood pressure and dilated pupils among others”, he held.

Demuren stated that Nigeria has reached a point where “we have to declare zero tolerance on the use of psychoactive agents by all aviation personnel”.

He said that the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) licensing requirements for aircraft maintenance personnel, air traffic controllers, flight operations officers and aeronautical station operators as well as flight crews, specify that a license applicant shall have no established history or clinical diagnosis of alcoholism or drug dependence.

Speaking on the same issue, director, aero-medical standards of the NCAA, Teresa Bassey, stated that often times, the issue of alcoholism is “swept under the carpet” as individuals do not usually disclose that they indulge in taking illicit substances or that they are alcoholics.

“Air crews are aware as part of their training that it is wrong to indulge in the use of psychoactive substances. Drugs have side effects but not everyone accepts and admits that alcohol is a drug and that it has deleterious side effects”.

She stated that research has shown that personnel on safety sensitive jobs must not use certain medications because of side effects that may affect their ability to perform their tasks safely and efficiently.

Blood samples from the participants were analyzed for DNA abnormalities, specifically the number of times pairs of chromosomes had changed places — called translocations. Since translocations aren’t eliminated from the blood like other forms of chromosomal abnormalities, they serve as a reliable indicator of cumulative DNA damage associated with radiation exposure, according to the study authors.

The researchers found that pilots had a higher average frequency of translocation than the university faculty members — 0.39 per 100 cell equivalents vs. 0.32 per 100 cell equivalents. However, after the researchers adjusted for age, smoking and other risk factors for DNA damage, there was no difference between the two groups.

But, differences did emerge when the researchers focused on how long the pilots had been flying. Those who’d flown the most had twice the frequency of translocations as those who’d flown the least.

The findings suggest that experienced pilots may be exposed to biologically significant doses of ionizing radiation, said the researchers, who noted that chromosomal abnormalities have been linked with an increased risk of cancer.

The move could effectively lower pilot salaries. The airline has a crew of 480 pilots. Forty of these are expatriates under contract who are, therefore, outside the purview of the new policy.

The new salary structure will have a basic salary and an additional flying allowance which ranges from Rs 600 to Rs 1,300 per flying hour, depending on the pilot’s seniority. The new structure will come into effect from January 1, 2009. Company sources said pilots were informed of this development in an email from Kingfisher Chairman Vijay Mallya more than a fortnight ago.

“In order to ensure optimum utilisation of the KF (Kingfisher) Fleet and its Pilots, I am extending the concept of hourly pay, as is already prevalent in the erstwhile DN (Deccan, now Kingfisher Red), for the purpose of salary alignment of pilots of Kingfisher Airlines as a whole which will further assist the pilot integration process. The hourly pay concept is an internationally recognised compensation norm for pilots worldwide,” Mallya’ s email said.

Explaining the new pay plan, a Kingfisher Airlines spokesperson said the salary has been structured in such a way that those who fly for 70 hours will get more than their current earning. For instance, a commander flying a narrow-bodied aircraft used to get Rs 4.37 lakh as salary, on the assumption that he flew 70 hours a month.

“We were assured that amount whether we actually flew 70 hours or 10,” said a Kingfisher commander.

Under the new structure, the commander gets a monthly basic salary of Rs 3.5 lakh, and Rs 1,300 for every hour of flying he puts in Given the airline’s current fleet and flight operations, many pilots put in between 10 and 30 hours of flying, they would get around Rs 389,000 (at the most), about 10 per cent less than their earlier pay.

Commanders flying wide-bodied aircraft would get an additional salary of Rs 60,000. This has now fallen to Rs 52,500.

Going by the same calculations, co-pilot salaries would be hit by around 14 per cent.

Pilots taking, say, a month’s leave will earn only the basic salary.

About two months ago, Kingfisher, which incurred losses of Rs 483 crore in the second quarter of 2008-9, tied up with Jet for a resource-sharing arrangement and had cut salaries of some 50 trainee pilots by more than 75 per cent, from around Rs 90,000 to Rs 20,000 per month.

In 2004, Air Canada employees made concessions of over $2 Billion. At the same time ACE assured employees that the sale of Aeroplan, Jazz and Air Canada Technical Services was undertaken for the purpose of re-investing in Air Canada.

Instead ACE has sold the most profitable arms of Air Canada and distributed over $2 Billion to a group of largely foreign shareholders. This windup is merely the final chapter in a sad tale of broken promises.

Air Canada Pilots are proud of Air Canada. We strongly believe that it is a vital part of the economic and social fabric of Canada. We remain fully committed to our goal of serving the traveling public of Canada with safety and integrity, as we have throughout our 71-year history.

ACPA is the largest professional pilot group in Canada, representing the 3,300 pilots who operate Air Canada’s mainline fleet.

“We are firm in our stand. We will not accept any pay cut, voluntary or otherwise, unless the management does away with expat pilots whose pay packets are much higher than ours,” a Jet Airways pilot told PTI here today.

“We (pilots) also wish that the company remains financially stable and are willing to negotiate with the management on salary cuts, but it (management) should also meet us half way. The management must accede to our demands on the expat pilots issue,” he said.

Jet Airways Chairman, Naresh Goyal, had recently requested the airline’s staff to take a voluntary pay-cut in view of the financial turbulence worldwide. He had also told the employees that the airline’s top management had already agreed to take a 25% cut in its salaries.

Subsequently, the airline fixed 10 December as the date by which the employees should respond to the management’s proposal.

“We have sought a meeting with the management on the issue as we have had no formal communication with the management ever since Goyal met us on 23 November,” the pilot said.
Alongside the pay-cut issue, the pilots also oppose what they termed as the “management’s unilateral decision” to lower their allowances.

“The management has reduced our variables without taking us into confidence which is not acceptable,” the pilot said.

“We are delighted our pilots have ratified this new agreement,” said Jonathan Ornstein, Mesa Air Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “In supporting this contract our pilots have demonstrated their understanding of current industry conditions and have approved an agreement that both addresses their concerns and fully maintains Mesa’s industry leading cost and productivity advantage. The agreement was concluded in record time and I would like to thank all of our pilots and in particular Captain Kevin Wilson, ALPA Master Executive Council Chairman and the pilot negotiating committee, led by Captain Albert Montoya, Captain Patrick Phillips and Captain Casey Cole. Their dedication resulted in a tentative agreement in just over nine months at a time when most pilot negotiations last several years,” added Ornstein.

This press release contains various forward-looking statements that are based on management’s beliefs, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to management. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable; it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Such statements are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, estimated, projected or expected. The company does not intend to update these forward-looking statements prior to its next required filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mesa currently operates 152 aircraft with over 800 daily system departures to 126 cities, 38 states, the District of Columbia, Canada and Mexico. Mesa operates as Delta Connection, US Airways Express and United Express under contractual agreements with Delta Air Lines, US Airways and United Airlines, respectively, and independently as Mesa Airlines and go!. In June 2006 Mesa launched inter-island Hawaiian service as go! This operation links Honolulu to the neighbor island airports of Hilo, Kahului, Kona and Lihue. The Company, founded by Larry and Janie Risley in New Mexico in 1982, has approximately 4200 employees and was awarded Regional Airline of the Year by Air Transport World magazine in 1992 and 2005. Mesa is a member of the Regional Airline Association and Regional Aviation Partners.

The Air Line Pilots Association, which represents the pilots, said the union approved the labor pact with Mesa with 51 percent of pilots voting for it.

ALPA represents 1,200 Mesa Air pilots.

The contract addresses scheduling changes and indicates that both sides will revisit other issues in 21 months when pilots hope market conditions have improved.

“This new agreement represents a step forward for all Mesa pilots,” said Capt. Kevin Wilson, chairman of the ALPA unit at Mesa in a statement. “No concessions were made for this contract, which is no small feat, given the state of our company and the industry. Thanks to our negotiators and the support of ALPA, we were able to achieve significant quality of life and other improvements at or above industry average.”

The current contract became open to changes in 2007.

The London-based International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations also denounced the publication in Vanity Fair magazine of audio clips of an executive jet and a Boeing 737 involved in a deadly collision over Brazil two years ago.

The association said in a statement it was “outraged to learn that once again the cockpit voice recordings of aircraft involved in a fatal accident have been leaked and are being used by a media provider for public entertainment.”

Vanity Fair released the complete audio recordings from the two jets involved in the mid-air crash over Brazil that killed 154 people in its January 2009 issue and on the magazine’s Web site. They were attached to an article about the 2006 accident, “The Devil at 37,000 Feet.”

The site also includes an interview with the author of the article, with snippets of audio from the actual accident sliced in. The pilots of the executive jet are heard saying “What happened?” while sounds from the 737 cockpit are obscured by the din of cockpit alarms.

Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak said in an e-mail that the magazine chose to make the recordings available “because they are newsworthy and serve as documentation to (the) article.”

The cockpit voice recorder is one of two “black box” flight recorders carried by all civilian airliners. It records conversations on the flight deck and any radio instructions pilots receive via their headsets and is intended to help investigators in case of an accident.

Pilot groups do not object to the release of transcripts of the recordings. But they say it is disrespectful to the people in the cockpits and to their families to have their final moments replayed in the media.

Gideon Ewers of the international pilots group described it as morally and ethically wrong to use “actual recordings for anything other than accident investigation.”

“They should never be used … as a means to provide what can only be described as voyeuristic entertainment to the public at large,” he said.

In the United States, the National Transportation Safety Board is legally banned from releasing the actual tapes. In most other countries, however, the legal requirements regarding the level of protection are less strict.

The collision of an Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet, flown by two American pilots, with a Boeing 737 belonging to Brazil’s GOL airlines over the Amazon jungle spotlighted problems within Brazil’s air transport system. The Boeing crashed into the Amazon jungle, killing all onboard, but the business jet landed safely.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Sao Paolo threw out negligence charges against the two New York pilots accused of contributing to the crash, but refused to dismiss charges similar to involuntary manslaughter. The judge also dismissed some of the charges against four Brazilian air traffic controllers.

On the afternoon of March 1, SkyWest pilot Timothy McCabe, who was operating a United Express flight, reportedly told Denver air traffic controllers that he had landed when he was not yet on the runway in Hayden. Denver gave a nine- to 12-passenger King Air clearance to take off. The planes narrowly avoided a collision, observers said.

Neither plane was talking to YVRA on its UNICOM radio system when the violation occurred, said West Routt Fire Chief Bryan Rickman, who was operating the radio. He could do nothing but watch as the United Express pilot saw the King Air on the runway and maneuvered to avoid a collision.

“I was scared to death we were going to have a major incident there,” he said.

McCabe was operating a 66-passenger CRJ-700 as United Express flight No. 6573. The Federal Aviation Administration issued the suspension of McCabe’s Airline Transport Pilot certificate, and an administrative law judge for the National Transportation Safety Board affirmed it Nov. 13.

That ruling does not close the book on the incident, regional FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer wrote in an e-mail.

“The airman has notified the Board that he intends to appeal this decision to the full board, so the action is not final until his appeals are exhausted,” Kenitzer said in the e-mail. “Until that time, he continues to exercise his airman’s privileges.”

SkyWest spokeswoman Marissa Snow said Tuesday that the airline has strict communication procedures.

“At SkyWest, safety is our first priority. We have strict standard operating procedures, including communication procedures at non-tower airports, in place to ensure the safety of our passengers is always first,” Snow said. “However, SkyWest takes violations of safety protocol very seriously and will ensure corrective action follows any final decision in this case.”

Typically, Rickman said, planes have one radio tuned to Denver’s frequency and another tuned to YVRA’s UNICOM frequency. YVRA is an uncontrolled airport, which means it doesn’t have a tower that’s part of the FAA air traffic control system.

At the time of the incident, Airport Manager Dave Ruppel said the SkyWest pilot told air traffic controllers in Denver that he was canceling “instrument flight rules.” Instrument flight rules are a set of rules for flying by aircraft instruments only, while separation from other aircraft is provided by air traffic control. When a pilot cancels those, he then operates under “visual flight rules” and is responsible for navigation, obstacle clearance and traffic separation.

Typically, several pilots said at the time of the incident, pilots switch to the local UNICOM system after canceling instrument flight rules. Doing so would have put McCabe in contact with YVRA.

On March 1, McCabe told Denver controllers he was “on the deck” while he was still in the air, said Rickman, who testified at the hearing. Although Rickman could hear what was said between the planes and Denver, he could not break in because only aircraft are allowed to communicate on that frequency.

“I was screaming on the radio, ‘Don’t take the runway, we’ve got an airplane that (is) ready to take off,’” Rickman said. “Nobody was on the radio. Neither of the pilots heard that.”

Rickman said he expected a collision either above or on the runway. His adrenaline shot through the roof.

“That’s probably one of the worst things you can imagine would happen when you are a firefighter at an airport is a nose-to-nose collision,” Rickman said. “Especially at those speeds.”

Pilot fatigue is a real problem, and researchers at NASA are looking at some interesting new ways to deal with it. They’ve launched a study to determine if neural imaging technologies could be used to measure stress and fatigue, and to indicate when these factors have reached levels that might make it tough for a pilot to safely fly an airplane.

According to Aviation.com, the study is happening at NASA’s Glenn Research Center and works like this: 15 subjects sitting in a moving flight simulator strap on headgear equipped with electrical sensors and perform a series of increasingly complex cockpit-related tasks. Over the course of the simulation, sensors measure blood flow in the brain’s cortex and oxygen levels in the blood using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and other imaging technology.

These techniques measure neural activity, which in turn can measure when pilots may be becoming overloaded. “Flying an aircraft involves multitasking that potentially can push the limits of human performance,” said Angela Harrivel, the NASA biomedical engineer leading the study. “When we increase stress and difficulty we can see how the subject reacts, measuring brain activity during overload.”

That’s good news in light of several recent high-profile incidents that illustrate the dangers of pilot fatigue. In one, pilots of a 50-seat commercial jet fell asleep for nearly 25 minutes while the plane was cruising at 21,000 feet. In another, a plane hit trees on approach and crashed short of the airport. Because of these incidents and others, the National Transportation Safety Board has urged the FAA to develop a pilot fatigue management system.

“No matter how much training pilots have, conditions could occur when too much is going on in the cockpit,” said Harrivel. “What we hope to achieve by this study is a way to sensitively — and, ultimately, unobtrusively — determine when pilots become mentally overloaded.”