Transport Committee on April 6th, 2017

[Jordan Bray-Stone]

One of our biggest concerns is the increase in instances in which you will have unstaffed exits on planes. One of the things that did not make it into the regulations was the requirement to have all doors staffed. Many studies by aviation investigation branches and government commissions over the years have cited the fact that passengers simply are not in a position mentally, and they certainly lack training, to properly assess exits in an emergency, and that this lack of situational awareness and ability to act and make life-threatening decisions in a split moment has very real consequences.

The NTSB in the United States published a study looking at approximately 40 flights in which there were crashes. They found that in no cases did flight attendants open exits when they shouldn't have opened exits, or fail to open exits when they should have opened them, whereas passengers were documented as having opened exits when there was a fire outside and smoke, which impeded evacuations.

This is one of our primary concerns with the ratios, that when you are asked to open a door that used to have a flight attendant seated at it—for example, the R3 exit on an Airbus A330—you may not open that door when you need to, or you may open it when you shouldn't. Once fire gets inside that cabin, you have precious seconds left before you hit that flashpoint moment. That's what kills people, the gases that are generated during the flashpoint. That's why we have a 90-second evacuation time as an industry-wide standard.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Dias, you indicated in your report, which I saw beforehand, that the Department of Transport branch responsible for aviation safety is overloaded and lacks resources.

Could you give us a concrete example to explain the impact that this lack of resources has on the work of air traffic controllers and the risks that the public is exposed to?

[Jerry Dias]

We've spent a lot of time talking about hours. We are talking about fatigue, obviously, and the same holds true whether you are a pilot, a flight attendant, or an air traffic controller. It's how much you can put up with over the course of a day.

Do you mind if I try to put it in a different perspective, based on your question?

You know what we're talking about. We're talking about money. This whole issue is about money, whether it's hours for a pilot, hours for air traffic control inspectors, fewer flight attendants, or contract flipping. Everything we're talking about is money. The issue of flight safety, safety in the aviation industry, is all about money.

We have to put that in the proper perspective. The challenge, in all the different groups that we represent, is tied to a mindset that says, “How do we get more with less?” If you want to talk about air traffic safety, aviation safety, then you have to look at the gorilla in the room, and that's the fact that it's about saving money.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

I'll ask just one last question, since I have only about a minute left.

Mr. Hogan, since the beginning of our discussions, the words “accident” and “incident” have sometimes been used as synonyms. While it is true that the statistics clearly show a decrease in the number of accidents, despite the increase in the number of flights, it would appear that the number of incidents has increased.

In some reports, we are talking about aspects of landings that were difficult to control because of turbulence, rather than fatigue.

Is my view correct, Mr. Hogan?

[Capt Matthew Hogan]

Well, aviation is certainly a dynamic environment. We can talk about all sorts of threats to aviation safety in terms of changing weather patterns, drones, lasers, economic pressures, and so on, all of these sorts of issues. Truth be told, again, past performance isn't indicative of future performance. Just because you have an accident or an incident, that doesn't mean you are unsafe; just because you do not, that doesn't mean you are safe. It has to do with risk mitigation and assessing those risks. Part of this whole SMS system is not only being reactive; it's being proactive.

We know that, south of the border, they had this catastrophic incident. I hope we don't rely on tombstone legislation in order to move forward with science-based fatigue regulations. I can't say whether there is a certain causal effect here, but the last fatal Part 121 airline accident in the United States was Colgan Air flight 3407 on February 12, 2009. There hasn't been a single fatality associated with an accident or an incident in the United States since that time.

Interestingly enough, they did a carve-out of cargo in the United States, so they had very different fatigue rules, and as a result there was an accident in Birmingham, Alabama, on August 14, 2013—

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Hogan, I'm sorry. It was so interesting that I allowed our member to have a whole extra minute over and above his own time, just because the information is so valuable. Maybe you can finish with one of our other members.

Mr. Hardie, go ahead.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for being here.

Captain Hogan, are there records kept of the hours of service for pilots?

[Capt Matthew Hogan]

Yes, sir, there are. There is an obligation under the law to keep track. It's essentially a logbook or a list of duty time and flight time.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

You mentioned up to 17-hour days. I presume that this would be an exceptional situation, but it would still be good to have two things: first, to see, generally, what the averages look like—what the span or the gap looks like—for the main line, and then to compare that with Rouge. Who do we get those from?

[Capt Matthew Hogan]

More than likely, with permission, I could have those provided to you.

That being said, you bring up a very interesting point, because there is time-of-day sensitivity in the Air Canada mainline pilots' working schedule. At Air Canada Rouge, they operate to the bare regulatory minimum, and again, that's a minimum. That's not an industry best practice. That's not a science-based regulation. It's some of the worst regulation in the world as it pertains to flight times and duty times.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

One of our previous witnesses, I think in part on the basis of statistics we've all been given, suggests that on the one hand the exposure is way up. There are more flights, more planes in the air, and so on. However, at the same time, the incidents being reported, the incidents per 100,000 hours of service, and so on, have been going down. The word they used was “complacency”. Have we dodged a bullet, or are in fact the mechanisms that we have in place adequate?

Having visited Mr. Berthold's city and looking at the aftermath of the rail accident there, and having heard many of the same things that we've heard here that we did in the rail study, particularly about the efficacy of the safety management system model, I want to open it up just for general comments quickly from each of you.

The idea is that a safety management system calls for a useful collaboration between the regulator, the operators, and the staff. Everybody pitches in and you get good results from that. You need trust and you need objectivity, particularly in the oversight, so that the regulator isn't just sitting there with the heavy hand of sanctions but is actually participating in upping the game. However, what we're hearing is that there are either some gaps in goodwill or confidence in this system.

To all three of you, does the safety management system actually represent something that we should build on, or do we need to be looking at something else?

Jerry, we'll start with you.

[Jerry Dias]

One of the things that came out of the rail study, based on Lac-Mégantic, was the reduction of inspectors within Transport Canada. I think we found that there was a dramatic reduction in those who were in place to implement.

What ends up happening is that a lot of the policing of the regulations is done internally. In other words, we're having the employers doing self-policing, which is why we always emphasize the role of Transport Canada and the requirement for increased inspectors. In order to have that type of system, the SMS system working, you're right; there has to be a true collaboration between everybody, including the unions and the management, but of course, the government.

I think that's why the system starts to break down, when you are relying more on self-governance than regulations that are being implemented and policed by others.

[Jordan Bray-Stone]

One of the biggest problems with SMS is that it's supposed to be a layer in the sandwich. If it's a layer in the sandwich, it's a really delicious layer. However, if you just have a slice of tomato, it's not a very good sandwich, and that's what we have right now. I read a report by the PSAC, the union representing most of the inspectors at TC, and it was quite revealing about the changes that have happened and the push towards essentially rubber-stamping what Mr. Dias is referring to, internal assessments that then merely get looked at by someone who's trained as an auditor, not as a full-fledged inspector.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I'll give Captain Hogan the last word here.

In your position, doing the work that you do, how aware of you of the safety management system? How connected and how participatory is it for you?

[Capt Matthew Hogan]

Certainly I'm very aware of the safety management system. I spoke to Transport Canada about this at the HFiAM conference with Jacqueline Booth, and in Canada when the SMS system was implemented, at least for aviation, they didn't first put in place the protections for that information.

An important part of the SMS system is an anonymity, the potential for a lack of reprisal for reporting, but there are two different parts to SMS. There's a proactive approach for risk mitigation and there's a reactive approach. In my opinion, in Canada, we tend to have a very reactive approach. Being proactive costs money, but there's only one business: safety is the only business.

It has been proven in the United States, time and time again, if you focus on safety first, and not just say that you have priority number one as safety but truly do it; you can look south of the border and they've had record profits since the implementation of the FAA Part 117 regulations for airline operators since 2014. You can see that since the Birmingham, Alabama, incident where they had a carve-out for cargo and they had an accident directly relatable to fatigue, which the NTSB cited. They lost an Airbus A300 going into Birmingham, Alabama.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, Captain Hogan.

Mr. Fraser.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'll start with an issue that you raised, Mr. Dias, that I don't think we've explored yet in questioning. It has to do with skills development. I see aviation, the aerospace sector, to be one of the most innovative in the world, truly. I think the industry we will be living with 10 years from now is not the industry we're living with today, from the moment you deal with baggage handling, to the roles of flight attendants, and pilots using different equipment. I'm very interested in investing in skills development to deal with the changing nature of all industries. Where in the aviation sector can we be targeting skills development to see the returns you talked about by ensuring that employees who currently face precarious work are going to feel more rewarded and enhance their performance, which could potentially save money for the employer as well?

[Jerry Dias]

Technology is changing so rapidly. I'm involved in a lot of different industries. Autonomous vehicles, if we're talking about the auto industry, start to transpose that to the aviation sector.

I'm a sheet metalworker from Bombardier, but being a sheet metalworker doesn't make me an aviation expert. Clearly, if you're looking at skills development, you need to look at every end of the food chain. I would start on the safety-sensitive jobs first, such as the air traffic inspectors. I would start to talk about training people for Transport Canada, about putting a much broader focus on the safety-sensitive jobs within the industry, and starting the investment there.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

That's excellent. I'll open it up to the other witnesses. Are there areas in your respective parts of the industry that you think job training would help improve safety?

[Jordan Bray-Stone]

I know that in some other jurisdictions flight attendants do their annual recurrent training more frequently. With all the changes that have been happening, whether we like them or not, we deal with them, and we could certainly do with training more than once a year. It's surprising, when you do your training, how much you realize you've forgotten.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Captain Hogan, do you have any feedback?

[Capt Matthew Hogan]

Yes, definitely.

The most important safety device on any aircraft is a well-trained pilot. The focus has been on cost. They've gone to a system in Canada called AQP, advanced qualification program. In layman's terms, I believe this was a cost grab. We used to do a check ride every six months, but we went to a check ride every eight months. In a 24-month period you have one fewer check ride. The onus then is put on the individual pilot. There's a lot of pressure when you're not training as often. You fly as you train and train as you fly, so the frequency is very important.

As well, on that note, if I have a Transport Canada inspector observing me, I want to make sure they are well trained and they're aware of these very complex systems that are involved, regulations, etc. It's very technically involved.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

The previous panel talked about Transport Canada inspectors having actual flying-time training, not just in simulators. Do you think that's important?

[Capt Matthew Hogan]

Absolutely.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I want to share my time with Monsieur Iacono. If there's time at the end, I'll come back.