FUD at Flight Options

[realityman]

One last thing. In typical management fashion you equate safety with paperwork. I believe you called me ignorant earlier because I stated that because fracs had no fatalities, we were pretty safe.

Well, it certainly wasn't as ignorant as your believing that having more manuals, and non-flying positions (director of maintenance, ACP's, etc...) makes a company safer.

Throwing books and people (and even the FAA at a company) isn't going to make it safer. All you need is a good safety CULTURE combined with experienced and professional flight crews to have a safe operation. Again I reference the fracs overall accident and incident record prior to 91K to make my point.

By the way, safety culture isn't necessarily more manuals, or even 50 training events a year. It's little things like knowing you can call in fatigued without any disciplinary repurcussions. It's knowing you can refuse to fly into hazardous conditions without someone higher up in the company second-guessing your decision. It's having your physiological needs met to keep you sharp throughout the day (adequate rest, decent food for your meals).

And just for the record, it was our UNION that secured the safety culture at Netjets, not management acting on their own, or even the FAA with its allegedly safer 91K regs.

 

[B19 Flyer]

I'm sorry. Did someone on here say that safety is not defined by how safely an operation is run?

That seems pretty stupid.

Safety isn't necessarily defined just by fatalities. But if you look at accidents and incidents, the fractionals are still leading the entire pack. And have been for quite a while now. Well before the new regs of 2005. Don't believe me? Do some research.

If an operation has very few accidents and incidents, especially when compared to the rest of the industry, and ZERO fatalities, I'd have to say it's pretty safe. I really don't know how else you'd define 'safe operation'.

Everyone, please re-read my previous post. 91K came about NOT because of any safety issues. It came about because one man in the charter world felt the charter industry was at a huge competitive disadvantage compared to the fracs who were operating under 91 only. He raised the battle cry in the charter world, got a lot of others behind him, and basically pestered the living heck out of the FAA until they agreed to examine it and develop new rules for fracs. A purely financially driven motive. Safety was not a real issue.

Anyone who tells you otherwise simply hasn't done their research or hasn't been following the frac industry very long and doesn't know the history.

Stupid???

Safety is all about mitigating risk, it has nothing to do with how many fatalities. 91K went a long way to mitigate risk, from carriers that didn't have any methods or even care about doing anything except going from point a to point b.

To look at an industry with a total of a thousand airplanes (91K) and compare it to general aviation, part 135 or Part 121 with unlimited flights and aircraft, then make the statement that because there have been no fatal accidents that 91K is safest statistically is nuts.

There is more risk in fractional flying than 135 and 121 combined because of the route structure, the airports operated into and the lack of flight support. 91K was necessary to mitigate that risk.

Statistically, 91k isn't even a blip on the radar when it comes to measuring stats. While NJ and the other "formal" fracs thankfully haven't had a fatal, how many have that were acting under Part 91 as fracs before regulation in 2005 may have happened that nobody connected to the industry because it wasn't measured? How many hull losses?

A single major legacy carrier will operate on the average 2500 flights a day. Statistically, one incident in a frac airplane would be skewed dramatically when compared to the amount of incidents/# of operations.

Once legacy carrier I know measures reportable incidents as .92 for every 10000 departures. That means that there is less than one recordable "incident" every four days or so.

How long does it take for any fractional to record 10000 departures? And when they do, will they do it with less than one during that period of time?

Just because there hasn't been a fatal accident doesn't mean that the industry was safer and didn't need regulation.

 

[400pilot]

All of this is wrong......

Part 91 is VERY different from 91K. Rest rules alone brought with it enormous cost.

1. No its not.
2. Both Netjets and F/O had rest policies and procedures that mirrored 135. There was no change for us at all. We run 91, 135 and 91k (F/O)

There were no manuals required for 91K, there were no standards for training or maintenance.

We were 135 operators so we had all of this.

There was no oversight or assigned positions such as a Director of Maintenance, Program Manager or Chief Pilot.

Once again, we are all 135 operators so we had all of this.

There was no oversight from the FAA.

See above....

How can you say there were no changes of financial cost?

Because there wasn't. Why don't you tell us what they were?

 

[B19 Flyer]

And just for the record, it was our UNION that secured the safety culture at Netjets, not management acting on their own, or even the FAA with its allegedly safer 91K regs.

What about the rest of the industry? And unions don't create safety culture. That's insane, because it's management from the top down. That's Safety 101. No buy-in from management, the culture will never even begin.

 

[B19 Flyer]

Actually, as someone has pointed ALREADY, and where you seem to have selective reading on this board, is that Netjets was operating under 91 AND 135 prior to 91K.

And the other major frac players had modeled their programs after ours, as well as having their own 135 certificates. So very little changed for all of us with the advent of 91K, other than a few runway length restrictions and weather requirements.

Please be specific where any of the major frac players costs have gone up considerably because of 91K.

As for all the little guys out there, I can't speak for them, but I've made it a point to keep up with the frac industry (I do have a vested interest in it) since starting in it 11 years ago, and if there are 18 frac operators today, the industry is doing better than it ever has!

Damn, this is about the entire industry and not just Netjets.

 

[B19 Flyer]

All of this is wrong......


1. No its not.
2. Both Netjets and F/O had rest policies and procedures that mirrored 135. There was no change for us at all. We run 91, 135 and 91k (F/O)


We were 135 operators so we had all of this.


Once again, we are all 135 operators so we had all of this.


See above....


Because there wasn't. Why don't you tell us what they were?

All fracs were not 135 operators....

 

[1po'dpilot]

Don't be, I only spend 10 minutes a day on this board and there is so much mis-information posted it's hard to answer all. Kinda like Santa Claus...:laugh:

10 minutes huh? Looks like well over an hour already scab... just more lies from your mouth. Dont you have a meeting with F & H or something to attend?

 

[400pilot]

All fracs were not 135 operators....

The other, smaller fracs are irrelevant to this conversation....NJ is not operating in a new cost structure or industry. Your whole argument is irrelevant.

 

[realityman]

B19, please please PLEASE do some research before you try to pass yourself off as some kind of expert in the frac business.

True, the fracs don't have nearly the number of daily ops that any of the majors do. I don't have our daily numbers available to me. But when you look at something like hull losses, or reportable incidents and accidents (that are the result of something a flight crew did, not something such as an FBO employee driving a fuel truck into a wing) I would bet my next year's pay that the fracs have a lower (even MUCH lower) number of incidents&accidents/1000 ops. And I'm willing to look back a decade, not just since 91K came into existence.

As for the rest of the frac industry, I'd love to know who exactly you're referring to. Are you talking about an operation like the one where they're selling shares in Cirrus aircraft? If so, you aren't making anything near a valid comparison. With that kind of 'fractional' program, you have an entirely different program from what the 'majors' in this industry do. In an operation such as that one, the owners are also the pilots. There aren't any ferry legs since the owners all do out and back legs. Duty and rest limits, why would this type of operation need them? What kind of SOP's would this operation need, since it's unlikely two owners would be flying together (and the aircraft only requires one pilot anyway)? And most importantly, can you point to Cirrus's falling out of the sky prior to 91K?

So you may be right. It's probable that 91K would have significantly raised the cost of doing business for an operator like the one described above. But did it really make it safer? I'm going to say yes, just because fewer people can afford the product, and if people aren't flying, they aren't having accidents in planes.

The real question is, was there a problem with safety prior to 91K. So far, you've presented absolutely nothing that shows there was.

And since it appears that you have to be told something at least three times before it sinks in, 91K came about NOT because of any safety issues. Go back and reread my posts about that in this thread. I'm not going to type it all again. You don't even have to take my word for it. Just do a little research on your own, and you'll discover that 91K was a competetive business thing, maybe even political, but certainly didn't come about because of genuine safety concerns.

As for the safety culture, it most certainly DID come from our union. The fact that you claim it didn't only demonstrates your continued ignorance on the subject. Yes, I'll give you the point that management had to buy off on it to make it work. But management was doing NOTHING to develop and enhance further safety programs at Netjets. What we have now was developed, and carried out, by the union. All management did was rubber stamp it. That hardly qualifies management as being proactive in the field of safety.

However, I'm happy to report that after our recent IBB, the union and management are finally working TOGETHER in a more synergistic relationship to enhance safety, along with many other programs.

 

[FR8DOG777]

HIG please read

I surely hope someone from HIG is following all this. If anything our management is to blame for the reduction of safety at FLOPS. Pushing crews to their outer most limits of physical/phsychological exhaustion. Turning this place into a revolving door and running off all of the experienced and well qualified crews. Pushing pilots into flying aircraft with discrepancies and the turnover of good mx personell as well. MS, Sanjay, and BT are a scourge to aviation and have plagued flight options for far too long. Settle the contract and pay to keep qualified crews around, they are worth the money. Replace the fools driving this ship into the ground. Let's work together and turn this place around, or please just liquidate the assets and don't waste anymore of our time.