pilot falsified logbook for BA CityFlyer job

[CYXR 257]

...and he got jailed for it too...

see here: 

https://www.cityam.com/pilot-jailed-lying-get-british-airways-job/

[fluffyflops 1,846]

Not been their week really has it. 

Maybe they shouldn't of let all those staff go expecting to fire/rehire later on.

I hear from Nigel and Doris over the last few weeks at the 'worlds unfavourite' , Youre lucky to see your bags on the belt , a correct menu/catering loaded in J and heaven forbid a stand ready when you taxi into to T5, they seem to be forever sitting on taxiway waiting on the vdgs. No staff. 

Couldn't happen to a nicer airline... 😁

Also the orange fantastic I believe has canx in the region of 200 or so flights too due to shortages this week. Its not even May yet.... 

I said 2 and a bit years ago furlough and too many people taking VR (voluntary redundancy) was going to catch up later with all the airlines if they went down that road.  But what would I know.... 

I don't think anyone has enough staff no matter which airline or department you work in. What a mess. 

The OTP / Cancellations for all the airlines this summer will be really interesting.  #summer ready 😄

 

Edited April 1, 2022 by fluffyflops

[birdguy 3,943]

I wonder how common this is, How many don't get caught.

Noel

[Bob Scott 7,715]

4 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

Not been their week really has it. 

Maybe they shouldn't of let all those staff go expecting to fire/rehire later on.

I hear from Nigel and Doris over the last few weeks at the 'worlds unfavourite' , Youre lucky to see your bags on the belt , a correct menu/catering loaded in J and heaven forbid a stand ready when you taxi into to T5, they seem to be forever sitting on taxiway waiting on the vdgs. No staff. 

Couldn't happen to a nicer airline... 😁

Also the orange fantastic I believe has canx in the region of 200 or so flights too due to shortages this week. Its not even May yet.... 

I said 2 and a bit years ago furlough and too many people taking VR (voluntary redundancy) was going to catch up later with all the airlines if they went down that road.  But what would I know.... 

I don't think anyone has enough staff no matter which airline or department you work in. What a mess. 

The OTP / Cancellations for all the airlines this summer will be really interesting.  #summer ready 😄

 

We saw similar mayhem in the US Air Force in the mid 90s as a result of the huge drawdown after the Berlin Wall fell...the so-called "peace dividend."  We flushed out hundreds of thousands of airmen through early releases, incentivized early outs, early retirements, and then involuntary separations with far too little regard to our force structure going forward.  The resulting gaping holes in our force distribution took nearly a decade to fix.  As luck would have it, it turns out that it takes around six years to create an F-16 flight lead with...ummm...six years of experience.  You can't just replace him with a kid you trained four months ago.  Who knew??

But not to worry...when jet fuel gets to about 2 quid per liter, the problem will sort itself out...

[fluffyflops 1,846]

6 hours ago, birdguy said:

I wonder how common this is, How many don't get caught.

Noel

I've seen it 3 times in my career at 2 separate airlines. 

Two similar cases to this one,they just got sacked and nothing else. 

The third one  was a pilot who lied about his hours to hours to go for command, and it wasn't checked. Other pilots were sure he didn't have enough (in accordance with the requirements of the company OPS-D) to of been offered the commad, but none of them complained, they just gossiped between each other. 

He flew around for 2 years until the company noticed after the rumours got back to the pilot management. 

After alot of drama and complaining, They chalked it up to an 'administration error' and the guy is still flying to this day in the left hand seat with a slap on the wrist on his file.  

The pilots on here will understand the drama and CRM issues his has caused especially to the people with more hours than him that didn't get a command course. 

 

[fluffyflops 1,846]

5 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

We saw similar mayhem in the US Air Force in the mid 90s as a result of the huge drawdown after the Berlin Wall fell...the so-called "peace dividend."  We flushed out hundreds of thousands of airmen through early releases, incentivized early outs, early retirements, and then involuntary separations with far too little regard to our force structure going forward.  The resulting gaping holes in our force distribution took nearly a decade to fix.  As luck would have it, it turns out that it takes around six years to create an F-16 flight lead with...ummm...six years of experience.  You can't just replace him with a kid you trained four months ago.  Who knew??

But not to worry...when jet fuel gets to about 2 quid per liter, the problem will sort itself out...

Problem in the UK is company wide across all positions at all the airlines, but  its hitting BA bad due to their size. 

People who got layed off have found new careers in different sectors on better money. 

Why come back to unloading bags in the rain on for 25k a year at Heathrow when being a delivery driver at amazon can earn you 30k.

It's that simple. It's not rocker science.  Pay people the correct money, they will do the job. 

 

Edited April 1, 2022 by fluffyflops

[JonP01 104]

Does all this imply that the logbook system is largely based on "honour" that you do the right thing and record entries accurately without third party signoffs? I realise getting a licence and endorsement must have some rigor attached to it but I am curious as to what happens the rest of the time.

[Chock 17,769]

On 4/4/2022 at 3:54 AM, JonP01 said:

Does all this imply that the logbook system is largely based on "honour" that you do the right thing and record entries accurately without third party signoffs? I realise getting a licence and endorsement must have some rigor attached to it but I am curious as to what happens the rest of the time.

There is a lot of trust placed in crews to log things correctly, but it is somewhat backed up by other things which can be checked, such as the company and the handling agent's admin for off blocks times and such. But such records are not held forever. We have to have such paperwork on station and available for inspection by the C.A.A. for three weeks in case it is subsequently found that there was an incident, but after that short period where we retain stuff available for the authorities, it can be binned off and then it might be more difficult to investigate matters.

We log breaches in procedure, but most of the time nothing happens to follow it up. For example, I and another guy at work this week both had instances where we pushed out ATRs and the crews did not acknowledge our wave offs to show the thing was clear to taxi. Normally this is not a really big deal (I just tend to wait there where they can see me until I see them flick the taxi lights on and then I know they are good to go), but I mentioned this when I got into the crew room and that's when the other guy piped up and said he'd had the same thing occur with the same airline on the same aeroplane type. Since it had happened twice in one day, we did officially log it, but as I say, a lot of the time such things get filed but never really followed up. The reason I reported my instance of it, was because there were three people in the cockpit of the ATR and I got the distinct impression that the crew were being distracted by this (their headset procedures were really sloppy), so I thought it was worth reporting because of all the sterile cockpit rules which should prevent that kind of thing from occurring, especially with an ATR where you get pretty close to that spinning prop, start the engines on stand etc.

Back on topic, one of the big issues with logbook times on airliners, is that for a long haul flight, even stuff like BA City Flyers to places like London City and Chambery (which we do handle), you can have crews log many hours of flying time, but in terms of actually being hands-on with the controls, the use of autopilots and pilots alternating the handling pilot role on sectors, means the genuine stick time for several hours logged, actually amounts to a matter of minutes where the pilot is actually genuinely driving the thing. If you work this out, it's quite shocking how little time genuinely at the controls some airline pilots actually have, even when their logbook shows several thousand hours.

A relatively recent infamous example of where this stuff came into play, was Air France 441, where apparently the stall warning sounded dozens of times as the plane mushed down from cruise altitude to eventually impact the ocean with one of the pilots having the stick back nearly all that time. Can you imagine the average Cessna pilot with a few hundred hours not knowing this was a bad idea because he doesn't just sit back and have the plane fly itself? Clearly a case of too much reliance on the autopilot and a fatal lack of basic stick and rudder abilities when the autopilot switched off owing to a blocked pitot tube. This guy had 2,936 flight hours logged, with 807 hours on type, but didn't even know you can just let go of the stick and let the trim sort things out, or push the stick forward a little and that will generally sort things out. Thus even genuine logbook hours don't tell the whole story.

Contrast this with two famous incidents in recent years where the pilots really pulled things out of the fire when things went awry thanks to their good basic piloting skills - the 'Miracle on the Hudson' and the 'Gimli glider'. In both cases, you had ex air force pilots who were at the controls, all with with loads of stick time, much of it in gliders, where you are flying the thing the whole time from take off to touchdown and you don't have the option of going around either.

Edited April 6, 2022 by Chock

[jon b 2,041]

The excellent point was made by “Trigger” the USAF instructor in the flightsim association YouTube video on the use of VR within USAF training….hours don’t make a pilot, experiences do.

It is on the one hand good that the CAA go after these infringements to deter others , but on the other I find it quite disgusting how they’re happy to go after the “little people “ who are easy targets while turning a blind eye to industry lead deterioration in flight time limitations and hostile rostering practices, which have much greater safety implications. Something I fear the whole world will learn about to their horror in the next few years if not much sooner.

Personally I have no sympathy for airline or airport management who treated staff abhorrently during the previous  2 years , both morally and financially,while continuing to take multimillion £\$ bonuses  and now expect those staff members to either come running back or those remaining do extra work to cover gaps. Time to reap the whirlwind.

[fluffyflops 1,846]

When the pay is more in 'Marks and Spencer Food Hall' than it is to be cabin crew (on a junk contract) for both BA and Easyjet then you know you are going to find it difficult to recruit staff, and the old staff  that did have experience got paid off with redundancy. Not to mention there is now no longer a steady supply of eu workers willing to work for rubbish money / contracts. 

Its very simple this.  You'll fill any position, so long as you pay a proper salary.  It's not rocket science this. 

For the first time in years and years both new pilots, cabin crew, ramp agents etc etc are not turning up on day one for training courses at BA and Easyjet because they are getting better offers at other companies. 

Again this is about rubbish contracts and not current covid levels as both BA and Easyjet are making out. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10694201/Travellers-warned-brace-Saturday-hell-POLICE-help-control-airports-weekend.html?ito=native_share_article-masthead

Edited April 7, 2022 by fluffyflops

[fluffyflops 1,846]

15 hours ago, jon b said:

 

Personally I have no sympathy for airline or airport management who treated staff abhorrently during the previous  2 years , both morally and financially,while continuing to take multimillion £\$ bonuses  and now expect those staff members to either come running back or those remaining do extra work to cover gaps. Time to reap the whirlwind.

I also think Jon all the airlines  BA/Ezy/VS/EXS/Titan/Qantas UK with the restart over the last 3 months have been heavily relying on 'goodwill' and 'overtime' of current small amounts of staff in all parts of the  'on the line'  flight ops and ground ops  jobs and the crews and other customer facing staff are basicallu starting to get tired and are saying no already to heavy rosters, (which are being published late)  and lots of overtime, (which people are now refusing). I also just think people in general are word not allowed off about life in general. 

I was in a teams meeting the other day with other stakeholders from other airlines, its the same across each airline, all of them. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by fluffyflops

[JonP01 104]

Thanks for that very detailed reply Chock. Much appreciated. And I had not given much thought to long haul flights and hours. Yet another thing to add to the mix as you say.

[Chock 17,769]

6 hours ago, JonP01 said:

Thanks for that very detailed reply Chock. Much appreciated. And I had not given much thought to long haul flights and hours. Yet another thing to add to the mix as you say.

Yup, basically you can equate it to the logbook in a flight sim, where you might take the 747 across the Atlantic from Heathrow to JFK, but stick it on autopilot and go and make your dinner or whatever whilst it cheerfully flies itself for literally hours upon end, then come back 30 minutes before arrival to do the descent and land it. You flight sim log book will faithfully say you have several hours flying time, but of course you have not really been actually piloting the thing for anywhere near that amount of time, you might have been actually flying it for less than half an hour.

Of course it is also worth bearing in mind that it's unlikely a pilot would find him or herself in the left seat of a 747 without having served their time on smaller stuff, to work their way up to that role, since the left seat of a big jet is a coveted position. This tends to mean the airlines can afford to choose the best and most experienced pilots for that role, ones who have plenty of stick time on smaller stuff with less automation, and lots of short haul opportunities to hone their piloting skills. But of course if that logbook has been faked, that's another story; we know what happens in those circumstances, as evidenced by that PIA A320 crash in Karachi.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Chock