Pilots call for urgent action over flight path safety
Pilots are calling for greater clarity about the safety of flight paths following the MH17 disaster last week.
The British Airline Pilots’ Association (BALPA) said the current system is ‘not good enough’ and said safety decisions should not be made ‘in secret’.
"Individual pilots looking at their flight plans need to have absolute confidence that the right calls are being made," said Jim McAuslan, BALPA general secretary.
"The process behind the choice of airspace routing is based on a risk assessment; both by a country’s national aviation security services in the advice that they give to their airlines, and by the airline in how they assess this advice.
"This risk assessment approach can give an illusion of safety but it is in fact vulnerable to all sorts of influences including commercial pressure and so it is not surprising to us that there are differences in the way that this risk is assessed by different airlines.
"That is not good enough. Passengers and pilots want a uniform level of safety, not one that is decided in secret."
BALPA said ‘greater global leadership’ and ‘stronger powers’ should be given to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).
"ICAO’s purpose should be to lead where national authorities cannot and it should have the tools to do that. The problem of the absence of a clear international co-ordination to avoid operations above eastern Ukraine has now become tragically obvious and to avoid a repeat ICAO should be better resourced and enabled to declare airspace unsafe," said McAuslan.
"ICAO also needs to reflect on its own rules of membership. Participating states enjoy privileges such as free movement, but with that comes responsibility. If a state does not live up to that responsibility, such as sharing of information and allowing full and free access to accident investigation, then membership and privileges should be reconsidered."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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