“We want our pilots to be entirely free from any financial consideration when they take a safety-related decision,” WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech said
Safety related delays and cancelations are not the problem. The airlines not having enough staff to fly the planes is the problem. Poor planning by the airlines is the problem. Lying and calling those YOU problems safety problems IS the ptoblem.
The loophole is allowing airlines to call any delay or cancellation a “safety issue” to deny passengerd compensation.
We pay for a an agreed service at an agreed time. If the airlines don’t provide the service as and when described we should be compensated. The government is just closing a loophole that allows the airlines to decide how, when, and even if they are going to provide the service we paid for.
Pilots shouldn’t be pressured into making unsafe decisions? Then stop pressuring them to make unsafe decisions. If the plane isn’t safe to fly for any reason, then it doesn’t take off, period. It shouldn’t be a choice for anyone.
The way airlines are acting these days, I can’t shake the feeling that the business of flying people from place to place is not the primary focus. It seems more like they facilitate flights mostly for the purpose of luring people into their poorly-lit wing of the airport where their goons can extract the real profits.
The chain of incentives is like this:
- Add regulations which cause airlines to have to provide more compensation for delays and cancellations
- Airline is incentivized to have fewer delays and cancellations than before
- Airline pressures pilots more to minimize delays and cancellations
- More planes with safety concerns take off than used to
- More incidents occur
I don’t know how to economically motivate an airline to reduce delays and cancellations and reduce safety-related incidents at the same time. Those two things seem mutually exclusive. It’s like how soldiers beginning to wear metal helmets “caused” head injuries to increase. The extra head injuries would have been deaths. The extra delays and cancellations would have been safety-related incidents.
Penalizing airlines for delays and cancellations is like telling soldiers they’re not allowed to wear metal helmets.
Penalizing airlines for delays and cancellations is like telling soldiers they’re not allowed to wear metal helmets.
I suppose it depends on how you define “penalization”. I don’t think a straight refund should be considered a penalty.
I feel like “Penalize them even harder for taking off an unsafe flight” is the obvious answer here?
Like, your analogy with the helmets doesn’t really fit here, because that’s an issue of survivor bias, but what we’re talking about here is incentives.
It’s only a problem if unsafe flights are the most profitable option. They don’t have to be.
Air Canada isn’t an airline. It’s a giant corporation whose main business is extracting subsidies from the federal government. It pretends to be an airline to do that. That’s why it treats its passengers like an inconvenient annoyance.
Lol it’s basically like those pyramid schemes all those stay at home moms pedal on the Facebook. I mean sure, it has a product, that is obsolete, overpriced and of questionably poor quality. But its really just about ensnaring more people to get more funds from the government for the people at the top.
Air Canada is literally a pyramid scheme.
The airlines are right, pilots should not have to pick between flying a plane that they don’t think is safe and having to authorizing refunds for passengers… they should be able to call an airline safety whistle blower line so that an independent safety officer can take a look and ground the airline for not maintaining their airplanes.
Seriously, how can airlines argue against it? They are saying that they will pressure pilots to fly death traps? I think airlines would be ashamed to have airplanes in such condition.
waves Air Canada flag violently
Don’t penalize us for poor management because we will force our employees to make unsafe choices in the name of profits is a pretty fucking bold take there, airlines.
Yes.
“We want our pilots to be entirely free from any financial consideration when they take a safety-related decision,” WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech said.
Is it somehow coming out of their pay?
I just retired as a school bus driver. There were some rules that required I cancel for safety reasons. There was also a rule that said, in effect, I was the best judge of my abilities and local conditions and circumstances, making me free to cancel even when cancellation was not mandatory.
I both cases, I was still paid as if I hadn’t cancelled. This was not just a secret little rule, but hammered in to us to make sure that we understood there was no penalty for cancellation.
I never once had an administrator question my decision to cancel. In the rare case that a parent questioned my decision, it was referred to administration who unfailingly backed me up. I’m sure there was a process in place to deal with malingering, but that’s pretty much standard procedure in every workplace.
If there is not a similar regime for pilots, there should be.
Don’t other jurisdictions like EU and USA already have passenger rights rules? Are the ones being pushed for in Canada any more stringent than theirs?
I doubt it. I think the passenger rights rules we are asking for in Canada are more or less in line with other parts of the world. So it begs the question - how are those pilots able to ensure safety without this supposed financial pressure?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Aviation companies are making the pitch to Ottawa that stricter rules designed to boost customer compensation and improve service could put passenger safety at risk — an argument consumer advocates reject as “ridiculous.”
The push, made in regulatory submissions and meetings on Parliament Hill, comes on the heels of sweeping reforms to the passenger rights charter announced in April and currently being hashed out by Canada’s transport regulator before going into effect next year.
“We want our pilots to be entirely free from any financial consideration when they take a safety-related decision,” WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech said in a video chat from Ottawa this week, where he was meeting with federal ministers on the reforms.
If a passenger files one due to a flight disruption or denial of boarding, the reformed rules put the onus on the airline to prove the move was for reasons outside its control, such as bad weather.
Airlines make the case that regional routes would be pricier for customers — or simply cancelled outright — as slim profit margins would tip into red ink amid higher costs from complaints and fees.
Advocates Lawford and Gabor Lukacs said the airlines’ warnings around routes to smaller or far-flung communities are tantamount to “blackmail,” while Bachrach framed the notion of pitting sturdier customer rights against regional flights as a “false choice.”
The original article contains 970 words, the summary contains 220 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The person holding a knife to their throat saying that your literally killing them by not doing what they want …
Is safety at risk? Yes … is it because you wouldn’t go to her cousins wedding? No…
