Mushroom Airlines – WHO Is Flying Your Plane?

Mushroom Airlines – High-Tech Jetliners vs Diminishing Pilot Experience.

Have you ever wondered who would be your pilots for your projected flights? Who would be taking you up in the sky? Or “who is flying you?” as you fly aboard a jetliner.

Have you ever wondered the maintenance and management quality of the airline of your choice?

Each day is a new day in blossom with new hopes, and each flight is a new flight as well. Nevertheless, one should never expect nor guarantee a new flight would be another routine as usual.

Around the globe, especially where tourist industries are lush and lavish, charter airlines are growing like mushrooms. Nevertheless from my experience, most of them could never have prevailed in the long run of economic struggles.

Some entrepreneurs are in the expectation of easy profits; whereas a good majority conscientiously knows that aviation is one of the most difficult businesses of the world, full of hurdles and unexpected surprises as in one of the most thrilling adventures of Universal Studios LA.

Those easy gain fans I believe have very low chance of success excluding the ones who are well supported by their financiers. The winner in this type is neither the airline nor the employees. The winner turns out to be the so called “aviation entrepreneur” by investing the cash flow into other investment fields right in the first place. Sucking the money invested in the aviation field like a vacuum cleaner.

Mushroom airline founders do not care much about the selection of their fleet aircraft and even flight crews, whereas the serious entrepreneurs look for risk management in their endeavor to minimize flying risks and play the game. SAFETY, INVULNERABILITY, AND ECONOMY is the sequence that must not be altered.

Effective factors and required parameters for a sound, safe and efficient aviation business can never be overlooked. I shall not repeat the contents of my previous articles here. So please be sure to read my “FLYING WITH MINIMAL RISK” and “EFFICACY AND PROFITABILITY IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION” to recall those.

Any negligence of the rules of safety, invulnerability and economy would lead to “ultimate self destruction” of the negligent airline company.

“The ethics of aviation” are the rules unwritten in formal law and regulations nevertheless widely known and must be obeyed by all flight crews flying worldwide, including the major airlines, charters, regionals, feeders, executive and bizjet departments.

Here, the key is, although the ethics of aviation are widely known by seasoned pilots and air traffic controllers of the worlds developed countries, those unwritten but vital rules are sometimes being ignored by owners, CEOs, and by other responsible persons occupying chairs in management echelons of aviation companies causing a severe degradation in morale efficacy of aviators.

Pilots, being the triggers and bullets of an aviation gun, are the most important employees in an airline organization. They are normal brave human and any demoralized state would send an invitation for lurking misfortunate occurrences to take place leading to possible fatal consequences.

“We have arranged the airplanes now let’s fix the flight crews” or vice versa logic would not work out.

“Airplanes” can not be just “airplanes” and “flight crews” can not be just “flight crews”…

Have they been maintained properly by previous operators?

What are the geographic and climatic properties of the areas they were operated? (Humid/dry/high temp/etc)

Have they been handled and flown properly?

Which age spectrum, make and model are you looking for?

Any history of mishap?

How good the acceptance check flights have been done?

Have the checks been completed by proficient check pilots of your own organization?

What level of experience you are looking for new-hire First Officers?

What parameters would you look for?

Abinitio?

Commercial license?

Twin-turbo?

Multi-jet?

Cheap inexperienced pilots with poor English?

Cheap inexperienced with fluent English?

Veterans with military experience or veterans with military and civil aviation practice?

Ex-captains of bankrupted airlines which have closed hangar doors? What?

If you are going to hire Captains, which parameters would you look for?

As finding perfect is almost impossible how good a background would you set for your standards?

How many flight hours as “Pilot in Command” (Captain/”Commander” in JAR terms)?

What kind of ratings? Would only one jetliner type rating on license be sufficient for you or would you be looking for 2-3 or more airliner/jetliner type ratings for more realistic experience to increase your organization’s efficacy?

Would you be setting fluently spoken English language as your standard operations language to be used during flight operations in addition to ATC communications?

Proper crew recruit is of vital importance even though it’s not always easy to find well-qualified and experienced aviators. Once “proper” flight crew recruitment is completed, standard initial and /or recurrent trainings including Crew Resource Management procedures shall enable them to be ready to operate.

Fortunately or unfortunately, you can pick your choice; today, high-technology drives the airplane mechanical and avionic systems rendering pilots to be monitor elements. Airplanes fly over and over changing flight crew and cabin attendants. However, when things go wrong, pilot intervention is required.

Unfortunately late statistics reveal that, pilot hand-fly skills and situational correlation abilities under duress during non normal conditions or emergencies such as an engine failure, fire or rapid or slow subtle depressurization have diminished considerably. The degradation or decadence of skills and evaluation ability has caused fatal consequences.

So far, shutting down wrong engine, flying into terrain under control, misinterpretation of alarming warning systems have easily occurred.

Subtle hypoxia and ultimate total incapacitation due to slow depressurization had brought down several high-flying Learjets previously in aviation history. Unfortunately, a new page has been opened in the history of airline safety as the occurrence has chosen a popular jetliner as its victim this time (August 14, 2005 disaster).

August 2005 was one of the worst months for the history of airline safety.

The number of flying airplanes has increased significantly within the same sky capacity, naturally the total number of pilots as well.

There are ongoing commercials in aviation periodicals citing “the need for pilots”. Of course, properly fit and accordingly trained pilots are always needed, and aviation schools need to make money for their livelihood. But, in the mean time, maintaining high quality training with no decadence should always be remembered.

Psychiatric personality medicals are of utmost important to be requested from new-hire pilots for related airlines.

Financially and spiritually satisfied high quality aviators shall increase the safety, efficacy, efficiency and profitability of airline business eventually.

Yes folks, the quality of airline crew and management matters. You shall realize that, while “ethics of aviation” requires proper attitude, knowledge, and flying talent; physiological and physical fitness is a minimum requirement.

As the latter is subjected to periodical medical checks for pilots, other requirements of aviation ethics can only be checked by company managements.

That is to say, airline entrepreneurs have to be able to establish an excellent management echelon in the first place, to be able to weigh the aviators’ quality up.

As the number of airlines worldwide has increased like mushrooms, so did their growth. Rapid growth in airline business is not desired, as speculations may arise on the financial health of related airlines.

Frankly, some things are going wrong those days. Either some parameters are mistakenly overlooked during initial establishment or operational phases or some very important points (VIPs) are simply and sneakingly being overlooked due to economical concerns.

What might those VIPs be? :

Fatigue? :

Due to an improper commercial operational planning way too busy as compared to the capability of the related airline company, fatigue can turn out to be a disastrous factor very easily. Fatigue, is not an unexpected thing, can easily be foreseen and avoided. Thus, flying above set limits by regulations can never be forgiven. It’s like a huge cumulonimbus on radar scope. You know it’s there and you simply avoid. Otherwise, you have an idea what would meet you there and what kind of consequences you might have. No one can claim that a very tired pilot is fit to fly especially for abnormal situations and/or within Mother Nature’s bad temper.

Insufficient flight crew experience? :

Who can claim that an Abinitio pilot say, very successful school-wise, can fly through emergency situations interpreting and correlating the situation he would be in correctly and properly? Who can claim that such a pilot can assist his/her Skipper correctly under duress?

Improper crew formation?

What else?

As far as airlines concerned worldwide, things have been going wrong lately …

Probably some parts are missing.

World’s airline businessmen should confess in the first place. Then communicate, with each other, with their management echelon and with their pilots. They must get together and storm their brains to find out what is wrong with their airlines other than the sky high fuel prices (!).

What elements are missing or lagging? What parts are wrong?

I bet they shall realize that, the very important elements of safety and invulnerability are being sacrificed for the sake of the economy…

Stop that…

Author Credits:

A Comdr Pilot in a Major Airline with ATP and CFI licenses. Regarding the big jets has been type rated on B-737/800-400-500, BAe 146, A-310, LRJETs-60, 55, 35, CL-60, SE-210. Served as an international corp jet flt dpt mgr & chief pilot on top of naval aviation career. Graduate of Naval College and Jet trng schl, followed by successive major trngs. School of Journalism enhanced his writing proficiency.”FLYING WITH MINIMAL RISK” by Savas Uskent, “EFFICACY AND PROFITABILITY IN COMMERCIAL AVIATION” by Savas Uskent