Transport committee  Our association, our MEC, asked me to produce a report about a year and a half ago when Aveos was being transferred and everything. We looked at the MROs. They were conducting the maintenance for our carrier, and they were all world-class operations, using Lufthansa techniques. The one that does the work in the U.S. does it for DND, UPS, FedEx.

Transport committee  Again, on that scenario, if I mis-set my altitude and I climbed to flight level 360, you're going to know about it. You're going to know it in a daily CADORS report. The system takes care of that. That's where you're going to hear about it. The air safety reports are just another added layer of safety.

Transport committee  I have just one more point. You can't hide behind an air safety report. I can have a hard landing in Hong Kong and submit an air safety report that I had a hard landing. The fleet side, the operational side, of the airline also gets that, and they're going to look at that, and they're going to call you in and look at your file and look at what you've been doing.

Transport committee  I think 30 years ago we didn't have a system like this, and then someone came along and said, “Let's have a system where the pilots and the line people can come along and openly report, and it's not going to be held against them.” Now I'm hearing that people are suggesting, “We want to change it.

Transport committee  What are you going to do with that, though?

Transport committee  [Inaudible—Editor]

Transport committee  Our employer vehemently fought the release of those reports. They knew what the damage would be. In a perfect SMS system, that report is meant.... If a city OSH group comes along and says they're concerned about, say, a hard landing somewhere, we want to look at it. The OSH component and the pilot component of that group should look at that report and say yes, these are the details you need.

Transport committee  The flight data monitoring system in Canada is FDM. In the U.S. it's called FOQA, flight operations quality assurance, and it is software on the aircraft that measures somewhere between 2,000 parameters a second. People say they want recorders in the cockpit. You already have that.

Transport committee  We have a joint agreement between the carrier and the association. We supply two gatekeepers, and pilots review this data daily. If they see something they don't like, such as Ed flying into Hong Kong and being really quick on the approach, not following the SOP, this guy will call me and ask what happened last night.

Transport committee  Nothing. It's a great system. It works great, but the problem is that not everyone has it. It's not mandated. I believe Transport did a risk assessment last year and said we didn't need it.

Transport committee  As you were telling them...[Inaudible—Editor]...cockpit, you can read whatever you want off that.

Transport committee  We're getting a little confused with the confidentiality issue and everything. The reports are confidential; no one sees them other than the appropriate people. Our concern is that several years ago they were getting court orders. I wrote an actual copy of that report. As a line pilot, I'm looking at that and saying that I'm not going to give you a full, robust report because it could end up on the front page of a national newspaper.

Transport committee  CADORS is the Canadian aviation daily occurrence reporting system. Let's say I take off out of Calgary and I mis-fly the standard instrument departure. The tower controller will submit a report, and it's called a CADORS. The other one is a CAIRS report. In the SMS system, if I have a safety concern, I go to my employer, I submit a report, and I'm not happy with the outcome of that report, then I can submit a CAIRS report.

Transport committee  I think we're confusing things here. Is this an inspection of a carrier or is this an inspection on a particular flight that day? What are we looking at?

Transport committee  From a pilot's perspective, I can tell you that 20 years ago a Transport Canada inspector would show up on my flight from wherever I was going, and he'd sit in that jump seat and he'd conduct an inspection of me and my first officer. I can tell you that I've had in the last five years maybe two cases where they've shown up unannounced—I wouldn't say unannounced, because I know the day prior that he's coming there—and he'll be in the jump seat and he'll conduct an inspection of me.