Proceedings of the Special Senate Committee on
Transportation Safety
and Security
Issue 3 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Wednesday, June 2, 1999
The Subcommittee on Transportation Safety of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 6:10 p.m. to study the state of transportation safety and security in Canada.
Senator J. Michael Forrestall (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: This committee is considering the current and future state of transportation safety and security in Canada. By the year 2020, can you imagine a transportation world a little safer than it is today?
Having said that, I welcome Captain Richard Sowden and Mr. Peter Foster.
We would like to hear the opening statement that you have included in a very fine presentation. You can read it, if you choose, or walk us through it. Then we would like to move to questions.
Mr. Richard Sowden, Chair, Technical and Safety Division, Air Canada Pilots Association: I am an Air Canada captain, flying an Airbus 320. My colleague is Mr. Peter Foster and we represent the Air Canada Pilots Association. I serve as the Chair and Peter as the manager of the Technical and Safety Division.
I should like to give a quick background on the association. ACPA is the largest Canadian-based association of professional pilots. Our 2,100 members operate Air Canada's fleet of 160 aircraft, flying six types, ranging from the Canadian-built Bombardier regional jet, up to the Boeing 747-400.
I have been asked to discuss the issue of pilot fatigue and I will also briefly touch upon some other safety issues of concern to our association.
I should like to ask your indulgence by accepting on faith, four basic facts concerning sleep and fatigue. First, pilots are no different from other human beings, although perhaps my wife might dispute that at times. Second, all human beings require sleep. Like food or water, it is a basic physiological requirement of our survival. Third, if sleep patterns are disrupted and a human being receives less than adequate or poor quality sleep, then that person becomes sleep deprived and fatigued. Fourth, a fatigued human being performs tasks at a lower level of proficiency than a rested one. This applies even to pilots. A fatigued pilot is more susceptible to error, and with that comes the risk of diminished flight safety.
These facts are not revelations. Scientific literature is full of studies showing that fatigue diminishes performance levels. Rather than quote chapter and verse, we are leaving with you a copy of a paper prepared by the Battelle Memorial Institute that was commissioned by the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States. It provides an overview of the scientific literature concerning fatigue, sleep, and the circadian cycle, or our natural day/night wake cycle, specifically tailored to the aviation environment.
The issues of flight crew duty limitations and aircrew fatigue have been the subject of much debate. In the United States, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, was asked to study the question. From their scientific research, they set out criteria for minimum rest periods, flight duty maximums, and guidelines for operating late at night across multiple time zones. Initially, Transport Canada considered these factors. However, the current Canadian Aviation Regulations, CARs, ignore much of the scientific research and perpetuate our outdated and unsafe flight crew duty limitations.
Consider this: Those members of the Senate who plan to travel on Canadian aircraft should know that, in full compliance with our current standards, the pilot flying you on your next trip could be working a 14-hour duty day, and perhaps a 17-hour duty day if your flight has been delayed by mechanical problems or the weather. With delays, the pilot may even be working the last of several 14-hour days, with only nine and a half hours off to rest before reporting for duty on the morning of your flight. This type of work schedule, which is perfectly legal under our regulations, hardly evokes confidence in the ability of our system to ensure safe standards. The subject of pilot fatigue is complex, but it can be distilled or boiled down to four basic factors -- tasks, duty time, circadian rhythm, and sleep loss -- that I will briefly discuss.
Task-related factors. Pilot duties entail a high workload and elevated stress levels, often without a break for hours on end. We conduct our duties in an environment that, depending on the aircraft we fly, could be cramped, noisy and vibrating, or, in jet transports, dry, pressurized, and often monotonous. While automation may relieve some of the workload and allow for a two-man flight crew, bear in mind that a two-man cockpit results in one less pilot to lend a hand during periods of high workload or during emergencies. This may have been a factor, which will be determined in the full report, in the Swissair accident. In a two-man cockpit, there is simply less opportunity for a pilot to find a moment to take a break and maintain alertness.
Duty time factors. Pilots are continuously on duty for long periods of time in Canada, up to 14 hours at a stretch, as I have already cited. In the case of pilots on reserve, who are required to be ready to appear at the airport on one hour's notice, the call-out may be unpredictable and the pilots unable to plan sleep breaks. This often results in a long duty period directly following an extended period of natural wakefulness.
Circadian factors. Our bodies run on a natural clock called the "circadian rhythm". We are most alert in the morning and the evening, and the sleepiest, as might be expected, in the middle of the night. Research has shown that our bodies have a limited ability to shift the sleep schedule. Attempts to compensate by sleeping outside of normal times are not as restful as sleeping during the natural night. Crossing multiple time zones compounds the problem, as humans are slow to adapt their circadian clocks.
Pilots operating overnight face a double threat. Not only do they need to operate during the physiological low point, but they have trouble accumulating enough sleep as a defence against the fatigue resulting from the less restful daytime sleep and the effects of jet lag.
Sleep loss. Sleep, as I stated previously, is a vital physiological need. To function effectively, the average person requires eight hours of sleep each day. Sleep loss and its effects on performance are cumulative and can only be alleviated by sleep itself. It usually takes two, full eight-hour sleep periods to recover from a sleep deficit.
Sleep loss results in increased sleepiness. The consequences of this are decreased physical and mental performance throughout the duty period, not just the late night portion, and may include micro-sleeps, or uncontrollable napping. NASA studies have shown that crews suffer an average of four and a half hours sleep loss on a European layover, and domestic crews have an average sleep loss of one hour per night on the short-haul operations.
Overlying these factors are issues unique to the specific type of flying. The long-haul pilot may face extended duty periods and time actually at the controls, while feeling the effects of chronic circadian de-synchronization and an acute cumulative sleep loss. The short-haul pilot, who also has long duty periods and cumulative sleep loss, is, in addition, coping with the greater workload and stress of multiple short flight legs with their many takeoffs and landings.
Are human beings good at judging how tired they are? The answer is no. Scientific studies have proven that we are poor judges of our own fatigue and equally poor at assessing whether or not our performance has degraded. Relying on a pilot's self-assessment of fatigue levels is unsound. To ensure safety, we must provide adequate regulation to minimize pilot fatigue.
How serious is pilot fatigue? One study by Dawson and Reid in 1997 evaluated the performance of test subjects and found that, after being awake for 17 hours, the performance had degraded to the equivalent level of a blood alcohol concentration of .05 per cent. After 24 hours, performance degradation was equivalent to a blood alcohol level of .10 per cent. In most countries, that is the level at which a motorist is considered legally impaired.
To many of you, flying after 24 hours of wakefulness may sound excessive. I should like you to consider this example, which is perfectly legal under our current regulations. A pilot on reserve, who is on a normal sleep cycle, awakens at 7:00 a.m., completes normal duties in the house or whatever he chooses to do -- nothing particularly strenuous -- and at 8:00 p.m. that evening receives a call to report for duty at 9:30 p.m. Under our law, the pilot can still be at the controls 14 hours later at 11:30 a.m. the next day, some 28 and one-half hours after waking up. An operational delay can extend this a further three hours, for a total of up to 31 and a half hours. Given what we know about the effects of fatigue, does this make sense? We do not think so.
Fatigue affects pilot performance by decreasing monitoring and cognitive ability. Fatigue encourages complacency and increases risk-taking tendencies. It also results in micro-sleeps and unintentional naps. Fatigue increases the risk of an accident, and other countries recognize this by having flight duty time regulations that are stricter than our own.
Why is there a difference? At the heart of the issue is regulation. Canada has a rich aviation tradition founded on the opening up of our north country and aviation pioneers. Unfortunately, part of this heritage lives on today in our attitudes concerning flight duty periods. Our current regulation, permitting 14 hours, plus three hours for delays, is descended from this dated thinking and is among the most lenient to be found.
It is not sufficient to rely on CAR 602.02, which states that a pilot should not fly when suffering or likely to suffer from fatigue, to ensure system safety. Remember, a person's judgment of their own fatigue level is known to be flawed. What we need are effective and reasonable regulations that incorporate a valid scientific understanding of sleep and the effects of sleep loss, and provide a level playing field by compelling all operators to maintain the highest levels of safety for the public that we all serve.
We are not there yet. This association would like to suggest three prime areas in need of improvement.
Modify the 14-hour duty day to take into account the time of day and flight segments. As stated, the current rules allow for a 14-hour duty day, plus three hours extension for operational delays. This does not consider the time of day, nor the type of flying completed, whether it is a long-haul operation with minimal landings and takeoffs or a short-haul with several trip sectors. To put the issue in perspective, research by NASA resulted in recommendations for no more than 10 hours flight duty in any 24-hour period, or 12 hours with increased rest requirements.
However, accepting 14 hours as our current regulation, we would like to see CARs 700.16, which is the regulation on flight and duty time limitations and rest periods, modified to take into account the time of day and the number of flight sectors. In the presentation you will find a chart that suggests some maximum duty hours matched to the time of day and the number of flight legs. Essentially, the top right-hand portion is the number of landings that you would complete as an operating crew member. On the left-hand side is the time that you report for duty. As the day progresses, the duty day and the number of flight sectors that you complete are decreased. This enhances flight safety by recognizing the impact of start time and of our circadian rhythms.
Improve the reserve rest rules. Under the current rules, pilots can be called to work in the evening without consideration of how long they may have been awake that day. As discussed in the previous example, you could be awake at 7:00 a.m. and still be at the controls at 11:30 a.m. the following morning. The regulations must contain some sort of maximum reserve time/duty time limitation. In our view, no more than 18 hours combined reserve and flight duty time should be permitted.
Revise the current augmentation rules, which allow for the extension of the flight duty period from 14 to 15 hours if there is an additional or augment pilot occupying the flight deck observer seat. With the provision of an augment pilot and a dedicated rest seat, we extend this to 17 hours, and with a bunk, to 20 hours for any one pilot and up to three landings allowed. Think about conducting your third landing after 20 hours in the air. Our association feels the above rules are onerous and dangerously fatiguing.
We wish to see the rule modified to:
a) Disallow the use of the flight deck observer seat as a rest seat for the augment pilot. How can you get any rest in a seat that is in the cockpit with the other pilots?
b) Reduce the duty day for an augmented crew to 15 hours with a crew rest seat and 18 hours with a crew rest bunk.
c) Require a second augment pilot for any planned flight over 16 hours.
d) Allow only one landing after an 18-hour flight and only two landings after 16 hours.
At the beginning of my presentation, I asked for your indulgence to briefly mention other safety issues of grave concern to my association.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada recently released its report on the Air Canada CL-65 accident in Fredericton. Part of that report discussed the fact that Flight 646, as with most commercial operations in this country, attempted an approach in visibility conditions that are banned under the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization and the flight rules of most other countries. Canada has no effective ban on approaches into low-visibility conditions. The TSBC, after the Fredericton accident, recommended that:
The Department of Transport reassess Category I approach and landing criteria (re-aligning weather minima with operating requirements) to ensure a level of safety consistent with Category II criteria.
The Air Canada Pilots Association has been concerned for some time about the lack of an effective approach ban in this country and fully supports this recommendation.
At Fredericton, an Air Canada crew spent some 45 minutes attempting to extract trapped passengers, using their bare hands, before any effective assistance arrived. While Fredericton represented a unique combination of obstacles that hampered the emergency response, the accident does serve to illustrate why this association is gravely concerned with the state of airport rescue and firefighting, or ARFF, services in this country. After years of lean budgets, cutbacks, and the devolution of airport administration to local authorities, emergency response services have diminished to such a level that this association has gone on record with Transport Canada as no longer able to support the CARs 303 series regulations concerning airport firefighting standards.
Current regulations allow the operation of our largest airports, which service large aircraft such as the Boeing 747, with only three fire trucks, each manned by only one firefighter. Our regulations do not provide any requirement to rescue trapped passengers, not even at our largest airports. We fear that this country has exposed itself to the possibility of a catastrophic accident where lives may be unnecessarily lost because our regulators have not ensured that airports are sufficiently prepared for the accidents that will inevitably occur.
As a final comment, we have noted, in this committee's January 1999 interim report, Recommendation No. 3, which calls for mandatory, random drug and alcohol testing, similar to current U.S. legislation. This association must go on record as being strongly opposed to such a measure. There have been, to our knowledge, no accidents or incidents involving an airline transport in Canada where alcohol or drug impairment played a significant part. Unlike most other transportation workers, commercial pilots work under strict regulation and can lose their licences over any alcohol intake within eight hours before flying. At Air Canada, we are further prohibited from consuming alcohol for 12 hours before coming to work. In addition, most major pilot associations, ACPA included, have peer intervention groups that play an active role in identifying potential abusers and steering them to treatment long before the problem interferes with performance in the cockpit.
Random testing of pilots would, in our view, be a gross violation of our privacy. Pilots are already a highly regulated and monitored group, subject to frequent skills assessments and mandatory medical examinations. Screening tests are not completely accurate and random testing could subject our members to embarrassment and career disruption through the small percentage of results that would invariably produce some false positives.
This association does stand firmly behind the cause of promoting flight safety. However, on the issue of mandatory, random drug and alcohol testing, we simply do not foresee any potential increase in flight safety. Without such a tangible safety benefit, we cannot agree to the considerable personal intrusion and disruption that such testing would cause.
Mr. Chairman, honourable senators, I would be pleased to answer any questions or entertain any comments that you may have.
The Chairman: Mr. Foster, would you care to add any thoughts or observations?
Mr. Peter Foster, Manager, Technical and Safety Division, Air Canada Pilots Association: Not at all. I am just awaiting your comments and questions.
The Chairman: This is a very comprehensive briefing and we appreciate very much your having taken the time to put it together.
Senator Roberge: I will start with your last comment on mandatory drug testing. If we assume that, for example, tomorrow, a flight with a pilot from Air Canada, a 747, crashes, and the analysis reveals that the person was under the influence of alcohol or drugs, what would be your reaction then? Would it be the same as today?
Mr. Sowden: That is an interesting question that I have not really thought about. Obviously, I would have to reflect on the statements that we have just made.
Air Canada has been operating for 60 years with a low accident and incident rate, so it is difficult to gain statistics on this. However, I do not rely just on the statistics from Air Canada, but also those from other operators. Around the world, and particularly in this country, professional pilots are not having these kinds of problems. When we were a part of the Canadian Airline Pilots Association, there was a collective program to deal effectively with problems of potential substance abuse. That program has been widely recognized as dealing successfully with the problem.
We cannot comment on the rest of the transportation industry because there are many other components to it, but specifically with respect to our members in our company, the type of medical testing that is done is very thorough. Our blood is analyzed on a regular basis anyway and our medical department is extremely careful in examining this. We are not having that problem.
Senator Roberge: You said that in the United States they are doing this mandatory drug testing?
Mr. Sowden: It is my understanding that they have a program south of the border.
Senator Roberge: Could it happen eventually that, south of the border, they will decide that anyone flying in their environment will be subject to random drug testing? Could that be a possibility, as happens in trucking, for example?
Mr. Sowden: That was discussed at one point a number of years ago and there were legal manoeuvres to prevent it from happening. However, it is legally possible. Certain Federal Aviation Administration regulations are applied to foreign operators directly and they could impose that kind of restriction. In general, they do not.
Senator Roberge: You have been talking about crew fatigue and the studies that have been done in other countries. Would you have comparable information for this committee, country-by-country, versus our regulations?
Mr. Sowden: The U.S. regulations can very easily be obtained for you. Another excellent document, probably the seminal document of existing regulations for taking into account pilot fatigue, is that of the United Kingdom, produced by their Civil Aviation Administration. I am sure we can obtain a copy of that and provide it to the members of this committee.
Senator Roberge: Any other countries? You were referring to a large number of them.
Mr. Sowden: For instance, most of the rules in European countries are very similar. The best rules are those of the U.K.'s CAA and the FAA, and then other countries in Europe model many of their regulations on those. The rules that utilize the best science and are designed and tailored to best minimize pilot fatigue are those of the U.K.
Senator Maloney: I am quite familiar with the expression "eight hours between bottle and throttle", but I do not understand what harm there would be in testing people. If there are no problems, then you do not have to worry about it. I do not think it hurts to test people. I should like to know why, apart from your safety record, which I happen to know is very good, you are so opposed to it.
Mr. Sowden: We believe it is an unwarranted intrusion into our lives. We are dedicated professionals. Most of us have performed this job for many years. We spend a great deal of time and energy on being professional and maintaining exceptionally high standards of performance, and we just do not indulge in that kind of behaviour. We do not have a problem with drugs and alcohol in the workplace. We feel that it is a waste of time and energy and has the capacity to generate a number of false positives, as has occurred south of the border, that can lead to embarrassment and disruption of the careers of our members.
Senator Maloney: Would the testing results be affected by pilot fatigue?
Mr. Sowden: I do not believe that is the case with the type of test that is used. There are factors that can affect the test, based on the science of how the test is conducted and how accurately.
As for the issue of fatigue, the answer to that is no, it would not affect the blood alcohol level.
Senator Maloney: What can be done about the hours that pilots are allowed to fly? As you say, it seems like a short flight because they go from Toronto to Ottawa and then to Halifax, and from Halifax they go to Calgary -- all these little segments. Is there anything that can be done to remedy that situation?
Mr. Sowden: As I stated, the issue of fatigue is complex and a lot depends on what time of day you start. For instance, I started at 4:30 this morning here in Ottawa to fly an airplane back to Toronto. I could have continued, if I hadn't been coming back here to do this presentation, with three or four more flight legs.
The workload and stress of flying are highest during the flight preparation, the first 30 minutes of the flight, the decent, landing, and the end of the event. Therefore, if you do five flight legs in a day, that is a very fatiguing day.
It is also, as I stated, related to the time of day you start and the length of time that you are awake. I am sure all of you have endured long days, perhaps when travelling, where you have had to get up at 5:30 or 5:00 o'clock in the morning to get yourselves ready, and then, lo and behold, you are expected to be bright and chipper for a meeting at 6:30 at night. That is the same kind of fatigue that we experience in our job and, unfortunately, errors in our job have very grave consequences. We do not get many second chances.
The purpose of good regulation is to create an atmosphere that minimizes pilot fatigue. Unfortunately, the current regulation is used as the benchmark or the "bar" by various airline operators. If the regulations allow a 14-hour duty day, they will schedule you to a 14-hour duty day. If they allow three hours extra for operational delays, and you say to the boss, "I am tired," he replies, "Come on, it is only another three hours, and it is legal." That is the answer that comes back and it is sometimes difficult for pilots to stand up to that because they fear losing their livelihood; they fear losing their jobs.
We have a strong relationship with our company and an excellent collective agreement that does deal with these duty and fatigue issues. What we want to see is one level of safety for all airline operations. It does not matter whether you are riding on the newest charter operator or on Air Canada -- which has been around for 60 years. The travelling public is entitled to the same level of safety. You can only achieve that with good flight and duty time regulations that are applicable to all operators.
Senator Maloney: When the pilots last went on strike, the main concern they had was the length of time they had to be the air. Did you get sufficient concessions or is there anything else that can be done to make sure that pilots are not tired? I do not want a tired pilot flying me around.
Mr. Sowden: Thank you for your support on that. One of the key issues in our last collective agreement was augmenting flights, particularly long-haul flights from Calgary and Vancouver into Europe. Yes, we did have to do some extensive negotiating to achieve our goals. Did we achieve them all? The answer is no, but we got most of the way there and we significantly reduced the problem. We still have some way to go.
However, I can tell you that currently there are other operators out there that do not provide that benefit. Their crews are leaving at 9:00 and 10:00 o'clock at night and flying for 14 hours, and then if there is a mechanical delay or the weather is bad, it is up to 17 hours. That is not promoting safety.
Mr. Keith Miller, Transport Consultant to Committee: I wanted to ask a question about the total of 18 hours reserve time and flight time, as I am having a problem understanding the practicality of it. If I take, for example, the pilot that gets up at 7:00 a.m. and is called to duty to fly, in your case, a North Atlantic flight at 7:00 p.m., he would have a total of 12 hours. At 10:00 p.m., when most North Atlantic flights are leaving, he would have 15 hours. Therefore that gives him three hours to fly an airplane to London or Zurich or Rome. Are my numbers correct?
Mr. Sowden: Your numbers are correct. Again, we were giving a sort of broad-brush description of what we are trying to accomplish here.
To expand on the concept, there are means to achieve this by fleshing out the details of the system. You can compensate for the 18-hour restriction if you allow for a longer notification period so that the pilot can take a rest before he flies. That is one way.
The other thing that can be done is to look at compensating for the 18 hours, if you are leaving later in the evening, by adding an augmenting or resting pilot to share the workload.
The third method is to have pilots on two or three different reserve schedules, where perhaps one pilot comes on call at noon, one at 6:00 a.m., and one at 6:00 p.m. This allows the individuals to plan their schedules and adjust accordingly. Our goal is to make sure that, as best we can, the total amount of time that the individual has been on call, plus the duty time, does not exceed 18 hours.
Mr. Miller: I used the example of the North Atlantic. If you look at a trans-Pacific route, with a flying time of 12 hours, it becomes an even greater problem to achieve anywhere near this 18-hour limitation.
Mr. Sowden: On the trans-Pacific routes, you would already be using augment pilots if you are doing it the right way. You would have additional crew members. It has been proven that good, effective sleep compensation can be achieved if you have a proper rest facility and you rotate the crews in and out of it.
Many of the trans-Pacific flights leave around noon or in the early afternoon. Again, you have crew members coming on call at noon.
Mr. Miller: If we look at the attempts of not only your airline but other airlines in North America to cut costs in the last two to three years, has your association done any calculations of the effect on the Air Canada cost structure of carrying out your recommendations?
Mr. Sowden: We essentially have most of those recommendations currently embodied in our collective agreement.
Mr. Miller: Could you advise the special committee on the magnitude of the increased costs of following these recommendations?
Mr. Sowden: I am not aware of what those costs were. We could do some research and at least ask the question, but those changes have evolved over many, many years. We did not get there overnight. There was not one contract that expired in, say 1989, and then we instantly got all that we wanted in 1990. It has been an evolutionary process.
If I might add, as an aside, the U.K. was very concerned about the cost and there was certainly a great deal of discussion about it. Our association is fully cognizant of the fact that if our airlines are not a success, we do not have a job. That is important to us.
Senator Roberge: Is Air Canada on the block system? For example, are so many pilots on the morning shift as a waiting period, noon period, and the 6:00 p.m. period?
Mr. Sowden: No. We have that in our collective agreement. The difficulty with it is that it depends on the number of pilots that we have available on reserve coverage. At the moment, we are still continuing our expansion mode and we are hiring more pilots. We are a little short of them right now. That does not allow us to run the full what we call "A and B reserve", where we have some pilots starting at noon and some starting at midnight. It does not always work that way.
Senator Roberge: Do the other airlines in Canada that you refer to, for example, the charter airlines, usually operate at the same hours?
Mr. Sowden: Not necessarily. For instance, charter airlines will traditionally run some early morning departures at 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. They will go down to the edge of the Caribbean or into Florida or long-haul across Canada. Then they will come back late in the afternoon, turn that airplane around, and send it overseas at about 10:30 at night. That reserve pilot can be called out for one of those 6:30 departures. He could also be called out for the 10:30 overseas departure, and their duty days are long. They quite often run right up to the limit of 14 hours. They are planned that way, and the reason given is that that is what we can legally do.
Mr. Miller: I was not being critical of your recommendations. I was trying to get a handle on the practicality of it.
To return to an earlier remark about the unfortunate accident in Fredericton, there was a lot of press coverage at the time, or immediately after, of the fact that one of the problems was that that aircraft did not carry a beacon that would give a location signal. Did you read the press on that subject?
Mr. Sowden: I did. It is also discussed in the TSBC report. That contributed to the time required to locate the aircraft. It was a factor.
The current regulation, which does not make sense, is that a turbo prop aircraft such as a Dash 8 requires an emergency locator transmitter, but a jet does not.
Mr. Miller: That is precisely why I asked the question.
Mr. Sowden: It makes no sense, so we fully support the recommendation for ELTs on all aircraft. Using direction-finding equipment, the flight service station operator could have given the airport rescue and firefighting people a pathway or a heading to help find that aircraft, instead of having to start at one end of the airport and go slowly down the runway. Then the first sign they had of anything was when they stumbled across a couple of passengers walking around in the fog.
Mr. Miller: Has anything been done regulation-wise to correct that problem?
Mr. Sowden: The minister has proposed a change in regulations and it is currently going through the process. That does take a little time and there are some objections from the industry about the cost. That is always an objection, but sometimes safety comes with some small costs. If I remember my numbers correctly, I do not think we are talking about multi-thousands of dollars to place one of these locator transmitters on an aircraft.
Those of us who fly small airplanes all have to have them. They cost around $200 and we get them maintained every year.
Mr. Miller: That is true for all the bush aircraft, is it not?
Mr. Sowden: That is correct. The only exception is the turbo jet aircraft.
Mr. Miller: The special committee was interested in this because I was given the impression that that exemption is unique in the world.
Mr. Sowden: That is correct; it is unique.
Mr. Miller: Talking about the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, I should like to refer to their recommendation that came as a result of that metro incident at Mirabel Airport in Quebec. It was obvious to some of us, from reading that report, that there was a serious problem with the dissemination of information among airlines, manufacturers and others on any potential safety hazards. That report referred to the use of hydraulic fluids that were mixed and subject to fire. I am using that as an example.
Do you have any serious reservations about the quality of the dissemination of information between operators that may affect safety?
Mr. Sowden: This has been the subject of much discussion, certainly within our company. Our company is actively pursuing some measures, in particular a program called Flight Operations Quality Assurance, FOQA, where we examine trends in flight data recording data.
One of the big issues here is information liability. There is grave concern in the industry that the dissemination of information will create potential liability for the operator -- that is, that it will be used against them in a court of law. We have seen cases south of the border, specifically the American Airlines accident at Cali, Columbia, where during litigation counsel was aggressively pursuing safety-related data from a program that American Airlines was operating called ASAP.
There is a way to fix this. Our association has been trying to achieve, in cooperation with our company, not just policy assurance from Transport Canada, but legal or legislative documentation to protect the privacy of safety-related information.
We are gravely concerned, if we are going to be involved in programs that collect and disseminate data, that this data may be used against our corporation and our members. That is the crux of the problem: information liability. If we can find a legal means to protect it -- and it would have to be included in the Aeronautics Act -- then we can address the issue.
If I might add to how significant this is, if you look at the statistical tree or pyramid of information that we use to enhance flight safety, we have traditionally based it on accidents and incidents. The cynics amongst us call it "tombstone methodology." We are recovering only about 5 to 10 per cent of the data. We are missing anywhere from 80 per cent to 90 per cent of the available data on the close calls. Those close calls are important, since they contain vital information that can help us to enhance the safety system.
I have seen how this is being used at Air Canada in our current air safety reporting system. It is a very comprehensive database system that analyzes our incidents and we are doing good work with it. We have been able to identify deficiencies in the ATC system that have been corrected by NAV CANADA, deficiencies within our own system, and deficiencies within Transport Canada. This improves safety, but we are all concerned about this information.
FOQA is even more of a liability, but the benefits of the information far outweigh the problems. However, if we get involved in the wrong case and get dragged through a court of law with it, we are going to lose this valuable safety-enhancing tool.
The FAA in the United States has embraced this concept and has decided that there are three key players or key pieces in the safety of airline operations: FOQA, or Flight Operations Quality Assurance; ASAP, which is a cooperative air safety action program to discuss incidents that are non-punitive to the operator and the pilots and contains limited information liability; and a training program called AQP, or Advanced Qualification Program, that relies on the first two.
We need those programs in this country and we need effective legislation to protect against unfair access to this kind of information. If we are going to enhance safety, we cannot do it in a system where litigation becomes a problem.
Mr. Miller: You referred to the unfortunate American Airlines incident in Cali, Columbia. I understand that the cause of that accident was CFIT, which has also been the cause, according to information made available to us, of a majority of accidents around the world except in the U.S. and Canada.
Is your association happy with the progress that Allied Signals and others have made so that this "CFIT problem" may be eliminated with current technology?
Mr. Sowden: To rely on technology to eliminate the "controlled flight into terrain" issue would be somewhat nearsighted. CFIT is a complex issue that involves enhancements to regulations, technology changes and training. There are several things that can be done. We can provide better technological approaches to landing aids for aircraft. For instance, precision approaches that provide both a vertical path and a horizontal path to a runway have a significantly lower rate of CFIT accidents. Non-precision approaches that do not have the vertical component have a much higher rate. Therefore, provide more precision approaches.
The other way is to use the current technology when doing non-precision approaches, as we call them, with no vertical guidance and getting NAV CANADA and Transport Canada to embrace the idea of providing a constant descent angle to the runway.
The current process involves a series of steps with various altitudes. It is misreading of those altitudes, perhaps through a fatigued pilot setting the wrong altitude, that leads to those types of accidents.
Certainly, using enhanced ground proximity warning systems such as Allied Signals is developing is a final firewall in the system. You have made a series of mistakes, but now we have the firewall out there. That will fix the problem. Our company and our pilots association agree strongly with the use of this equipment and we are going to be fitting our aircraft with it. We believe it is important.
Senator Roberge: What about the other members of your association who are not with Air Canada?
Mr. Sowden: There are no other members. At the present time we are the Air Canada Pilots Association. In 1995, we chose to form our own association rather than remain part of the Canadian Airline Pilots Association. So we are only Air Canada pilots.
Mr. Miller: In connection with the so-called "aged aircraft" problem that we read about almost every week of our lives, I am fully cognizant that you do not have any aged aircraft or airframes in Air Canada except perhaps for the DC-9s, if you still have them. Nevertheless, it is a problem for the committee because there are aged aircraft in Canada and there are aged aircraft or airframes flying into and out of this country. Just last week, or the week before, there was more publicity about restrictions being put on the Boeing 727 now.
Does your association have any opinions on a solution to this so-called problem, or any opinions at all on the subject?
Mr. Sowden: First of all, you are correct; we still do operate the DC-9.
The Chairman: How many of them are left?
Mr. Sowden: There are 15 and we are going to continue operating them for the foreseeable future. We are equipping the engines with hush kits, which will allow them to meet the new noise requirements. They are now the oldest aircraft in the fleet, with some of them close to 30 years old. It has, unfortunately, gained the nickname "the Jurassic jet". Our company has a very aggressive maintenance campaign. It has energized the aircraft and done extensive work on it.
From our association's point of view, the key is to have effective research on what the magnitude of the problem is and where it lies, and then to develop good regulations and airworthiness directives that compel operators to meet standards.
Our association has not been extensively involved in this area because we do not operate a large number of these aged aircraft and our company has been extremely proactive in dealing with this issue. That is one of the reasons why we retired our 747 classic aircraft, the older ones; they were requiring huge, expensive checks. It was rather like a Pandora's box. If you were lucky, it was $5 million to open the airplane up and look at it. If you were really unlucky, it was $20 million. It is not cost effective.
The Chairman: The current Aeronautics Act is some 70 years old now, or approaching it. It is a venerable piece of legislation in terms of active regulation. The codification of the regulations that now serve in lieu of an Aeronautics Act is working. There is no doubt about the intent, and there is no doubt about the penalties if you fail to meet the requirements. However, there is no office consolidation of the act. I am sure you do not carry one around in your briefcase.
Is that the place to tackle all of these very broad questions? It is very important to this committee that, in the preparation of our report, we do not lose sight of that need to develop and enhance a safety culture for all aspects of transportation, not just flying.
Where do we best properly begin to tackle, for example, all of the questions on allowable hours of flying? Where do we start? By telling management they cannot do that because it is economical, they must do it for other reasons, spelled out in an act, not a regulation made pursuant to a decision taken in response to an ICAO requirement or whatever?
Is the act a good place to start and have you thought of it in those terms? Or, conversely, is the way to do it through your employee-employer relations packages, your union contracts? Is that the way to do it or is there another way?
Mr. Sowden: I will try and separate out a couple of components of the question. You have raised some excellent points.
The entire transportation industry needs the ability to collect and disseminate safety information in a manner that does not place the corporation and its employees in jeopardy.
The Chairman: Is the place to protect that in an act, not in a regulation?
Mr. Sowden: That is correct. It needs to be a fundamental philosophy, a "mission statement", to use a corporate buzzword, as to how we are going to conduct the business of safety. Safety is founded on the collection of data to determine trends, identify problems, and achieve fixes, but that cannot be done unless that information is not going to be a liability.
The Chairman: Again, without putting words in your mouth, I am trying to get you to say that the regulatory route is not the way to go.
Mr. Sowden: Yes.
The Chairman: We have been doing that for the last 15 or 20 years, and while it works, that is accidental.
Mr. Sowden: We have actually received correspondence from Transport Canada that indicates that, at the regulatory level, our desires would be difficult to achieve and that an amendment to the Aeronautics Act would be the way to go. I believe that that is the way it should be done and our association would fully support it. Start at the top of the food chain.
The Chairman: Let us get a foundation under the house. That is very important.
The committee has not had sufficient discussion on the question of transporting hazardous materials by air. We have heard evidence on the subject of fire and smoke detection systems and oxygen deprivation methods and all sorts of wonderful systems. However, we do have many middle-aged aircraft, as our consultant has suggested, that for economic and probably valid commercial reasons will not be subject to retrofit. They are just too old and it is not within the realm of reality. What do we do about that? Sometimes I wake up in the morning and say, "To hell with them. Do not carry hazardous materials on planes."
Mr. Sowden: Thank you very much. You have just answered in the way I would choose to answer it.
The Chairman: Why do you not say that?
Mr. Sowden: I would say that. If the aircraft is not appropriately equipped, then you need to examine what dangerous goods you are carrying, especially ones that may present a combustion hazard. If they do not have the appropriate equipment on the aircraft to deal with that, then the only safe option is not to carry them. There are a large number of U.S. carriers, by the way, that do not carry dangerous goods, period.
The Chairman: We do not have much information about that, but we are aware that there is a separation. Indeed, we have more than one international carrier that makes no bones about advertising the fact that there is nothing in the hold that will burn or blow up.
Mr. Sowden: The other issue that always needs to be discussed with respect to dangerous goods is passengers who inadvertently carry this onto the aircraft. If my memory serves me correctly, our company has had a significant number of incidents of that kind, but not with dangerous goods that go through our assessment process, are vetted by our trained dangerous goods specialists, and are packed, loaded and handled according to the defined process.
The Chairman: Materials have become quite sophisticated in recent years. In the old days, you needed a ton of steel to contain a couple of sticks of dynamite. That is no longer the case today; there are other containment methods. There is a phrase that covers the level of explosion a plane can absorb without being fatally destroyed.
Do you have any comments about containment of dangerous cargo or hazardous materials that may end up in planes that are not up to snuff in terms of protecting against that hazardous material?
Mr. Sowden: A significant number of devices or chemicals like those you are describing should not be allowed on aircraft. There are other means of transporting them. Or, perhaps under extreme circumstances, such as accessibility in our North, there may be special scenarios designed and defined that deal with the specific risks of that kind of transportation. But as a general proposition, I do not believe that it is acceptable to carry that kind of material.
Other flammables that are carried can present significant danger, and then you get into the issue of whether we should restrict those to cargo aircraft only. My first thought is, what about those poor pilots? They are as valuable as the passengers; at least, I should like to think they are.
This is an important issue that needs to be examined carefully. We need to apply good, solid risk management analysis. What are the real risks?
The Chairman: Has ICAO turned its attention to this question?
Mr. Sowden: I am unaware of what ICAO may or may not have done in recent memory. Unfortunately, I am not an expert on the subject of dangerous goods, but I know that a great deal of work has been done in this area in previous years.
The Chairman: Are you satisfied generally with airport security? When you land in Canada, I would assume you feel secure about bringing on board clean passengers and clean luggage.
When you fly outside of Canada, do you have the same feeling of security? I believe very strongly that if we are to enhance the safety of Canadians who are flying, we must do it not only in our own territory, but we must look at navigational aids, we must look at landing aids, we must look at airports, we must look at terrorism, we must look at a lot of other things and, where necessary, involve ourselves through our international agencies in correcting that so that we can say we did make it a little safer.
Mr. Sowden: As an association, we have always been concerned that if you privatize the security at airports, there needs to be sufficient oversight to ensure that standards are not lowered in the very competitive process of bidding for contracts and that good, effective security measures are carried out.
I could probably think of two or three ways that people could short-circuit the system. We have to understand that it can happen; it is a possibility.
As we get out of Canada, security is certainly excellent and very thorough in the United States and in France, Germany and the other Western European countries. For instance, security in London Heathrow is very aggressive. My daughter had a water pistol removed the last time I holidayed. It was probably a very dangerous water pistol.
The Chairman: That depends on whether she was three and a half or four years old.
Mr. Sowden: She was five years old.
The Chairman: Then it was dangerous.
Mr. Sowden: Certainly, having been soaked by that water pistol I know. So they are to be commended for their thoroughness.
I dislike using the words "Third World countries," but as you move into other countries that have different or non-existent standards, there are problems. There is the issue of how to deal with them when they connect to our Canadian airlines.
We even had that problem internally in Canada with small airports that had no security. When a passenger was coming into a larger Canadian airport and connecting to a Canadian flight, originally there was no requirement for security checks for onward travel.
The Chairman: We have continuing concerns with the provision of services -- for example, the caterers.
Mr. Sowden: The issue of the assignment of airport security passes is quite interesting. For airport workers, it is not overly difficult to get at least a temporary pass to gain access to the air site. These individuals are on and off our airplanes. I will be going through the pass renewal process and, my goodness, I thought I was applying for a job to guard the Prime Minister. It was quite an extensive process. Then there is the security process to get to the airplanes. In some airports, the internal security has gotten to the point where it is almost impossible for a pilot to get to his or her airplane. Usually we have to find a cleaner. He has the key and can let us in.
One issue associated with security has been the subject of much discussion, and that is disruptive passengers, or air rage. It is very serious. I have been the captain on the airplane when we have had disruptive passengers. The issue is not only more present in the media; I can tell you that the occurrence rate is statistically higher, although I do not have the figures.
There are also legal problems in dealing with that. We have had difficulties. For instance, we had a flight out of Jamaica that had to be diverted to Miami because of a disruptive passenger. When we landed, our pilot said, "Take this individual off, charge him, do something." The pilot was told there is nothing they could do about it. It was a Canadian registered aircraft; the passenger was not an American citizen; he did not hurt an American citizen; it did not occur over American airspace. They said, "Sorry, it is not our problem." There needs to be a worldwide concerted effort to develop a means to prosecute individuals who are disruptive and endanger flights.
If we had a problem with a Canadian passenger between Toronto and Fredericton, we could deal with that. It could get a little stickier if the person were from the United States or Mexico or Greece or somewhere else. It is a difficult issue. There needs to be a concerted effort to develop legislation and protocol that would ensure that these people are prosecuted, because right now they are not being prosecuted.
Senator Roberge: Are you allowed to carry handcuffs or things like that?
Mr. Sowden: We use restraining ties. They are the one-way Teflon cuffs. They are effective, but if we have a disruptive passenger, our in-flight service people are back there. There is a reluctance amongst the pilot work force to go back there because if we are injured we still have the issue of flying the airplane. There is no gender bias here, but some of our female flight attendants are outsized by these people. Some of our female flight attendants know karate and perhaps that might be of assistance to them. But they feel in danger too. It is a difficult issue.
The Chairman: It is obviously an international problem and an area that ICAO should properly address. Does it help ICAO if Canada has, for example, a section in the new Aeronautics Act dealing with appropriate handling of passengers under a variety of circumstances?
Mr. Sowden: That is a very important thing to do. I know that right now under CARs there is a working group on disruptive passengers. It is extremely important that we elevate this issue to the highest level in the government so that it can be taken internationally.
Let us take a leadership role in this country. Let us get the other countries working with us. Canada is a world leader in aviation in so many ways. Part of our problem is that we do not tell anybody about it. We are so shy about it. We are really good about what we do here in aviation.
The Chairman: Information is so vital. We can collect so much of it. In the beginning, the satellite that went up was programmed to geographical and climatic conditions of the United States, not Canada. But for 12 years, the millions of bytes that came to be hundreds of millions of bytes of information provided the largest single base for the knowledge of our country. It was a system designed for another country. It did not suit Canada. Therefore, we were badly misled in programs. Abuse of technology, abuse of stored information, and wrong information collected to begin with do not really help us. But we do need good information. It has to be stored properly and it has to be accessible. Who is going to pay to do that?
I am covering every single thing that you can possibly think of because unless you know everything you cannot take the next step.
Mr. Sowden: The issue of cost is important. We all know that at the end of the day we have to make a profit. The shareholders are looking for that and it is not unreasonable. However, it has been proven repeatedly that proper collection of sound safety information not only enhances safety, it enhances economics and efficiency.
For instance, in the Flight Operations Quality Assurance Program, when you are looking at flight data recording data, you are able to find engines that are not performing to standard, aircraft that are out of rig and burning more fuel. The costs of the program are very low when compared to the benefits that the program produces. For Air Canada, by the time the dust settles, you are probably looking at about a $2-million commitment for a full FOQA program.
Let us look at another program -- an air safety reporting system -- which is much more easily put together and captures a large volume of data. In that program, you collect incident data from your crews, who say something like, "This happened to me on X day."
There are very reasonable database management programs out there. The one that Air Canada chose to buy off the shelf came from British Airways. That system is so good that approximately 80 airlines in the world use it. Once a month they all receive one CD-ROM disc that they get to share. For instance, at Air Canada we operate only three Boeing 747s, which does not provide a really good database with which to work. But among the 80 to 85 operators out there, there are probably 200 or more 747s. We are able to look at their de-identified trend data and we are able to determine problem areas and fix them. That saves us money.
In Canada alone we identified a problem at Quebec City. A number of our regional jets were missing approaches or doing go arounds. We were able to determine that the source of that problem was one aircraft with a technical problem. It was not one of our airplanes. Some changes to air traffic control procedures were needed. Each one of those go arounds costs our company many thousands of dollars. In other words, the benefits are there. The airlines and the operators that have the foresight to take a look at it will save money. If we prevent even one accident, we will have saved a fortune.
The Chairman: What three safety issues can you think of right now that we must correct in the next ten years if we are not to have planes dropping out of the sky at the rate predicted as the number of flights increases exponentially? What are the three things in your business that concern you?
Mr. Sowden: First off is something we just spent a lot of time discussing and that is safety information collection, storage and dissemination. It is critical. That is no revelation. This has been around for a long time. Many people more learned than myself have been presenting this concept. We need to do this and we have to do it in a manner that does not jeopardize the operator or the pilots or place them in a position of potential civil liability. There are ways to do that. Sometimes it is a difficult decision to make and it has its potential drawbacks.
I have touched on the flight and duty time issues quite heavily. I believe that we need to level the playing field. I work for a company with a good collective agreement. We have made significant improvements to our flight and duty time regulations. But the rest of the people are not playing by the same rules.
The science is there -- the Battelle study that we have placed in front of you provides it. Let us build our regulations on science. Will there be costs associated with that? Yes. In the United Kingdom there was a grave concern that they were all going to go bankrupt, but one of the most successful airlines in the world is British Airways. They operate to those standards.
The Chairman: You are saying that they operate to discriminating safety standards; is that right?
Mr. Sowden: Their standards are very high. Their flight and duty time regulations are first class. I would really love to have those regulations for everybody here so that every airplane and every airline has the same standard. Our travelling public is entitled to that.
Controlled flight into terrain is a big issue. We have to reduce that kind of accidents. We have discussed some methods of dealing with that. Technology is not the silver bullet. It is not the whole equation. We need to work on the human-technology interface. We need to be more cognizant of human factors in design, operation and maintenance of aircraft. That is a very important issue.
I fly probably the highest technology airplane around, the Airbus. I will admit that some of the interfaces on that leave me scratching my head. It could be made better. We need to work on that. Human factors are contributing to accidents. We know that. There are many things that we can fix.
Senator Maloney: Can you fix the food?
Mr. Sowden: I would love to be able to fix the food. I get to eat it an awful lot.
The one thing that does need to be corrected in this country right away is the approach ban, the low weather visibility limits. It is very significant. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has done some recent studies on this. Our accident rate for approaches and landings in poor weather is far in excess of that of the United States. It is simple: they have a rule. If the required visibility is defined on the approach chart, that is it. Right now we can do a non-precision approach with a quarter of a mile of visibility. The chances of success are not there. Why are we doing this? It makes no sense. In Fredericton, it was an approach with Category II weather limits of a quarter of a mile onto a runway that does not have the facilities and lights to allow the pilot sufficient visual reference to complete the landing. That is not good risk management.
The FAA did studies on this. They were able to determine that there were limits below which you could not go. Let us take those limits. We are not up in the bush anymore, not opening up the North in Foxmoths with wonderful people who did incredible things and wrote amazing stories about how they cheated death many times. We have progressed beyond that. Let us become a leader in this area and not remain at the bottom of the food chain, because that is where we are. Our regulations in this area are abysmal. They are unsafe and we have the accident statistics to prove it.
On the issue of low visibility approaches, I would suggest you contact the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. As a part of the Fredericton accident and as an adjunct to it, they did a separate study on low visibility approach accidents and incidents. I personally provided some submissions on it.
The Chairman: They will appear before us next week. They want the board expanded in terms of both its professional capacity and the money that it has available to it. They want it to take on several roles, some of them intermediate and passing, other perhaps more permanent. Perhaps we might have to add one or two more investigators. Certainly we have to expand their physical plant to begin to cope with some of this stuff.
I am not happy with any of the major airlines. I am much happier this year than I may have been five years ago, but I am still not very happy with any of them.
On the question of how to handle the families of passengers, we have had a few good briefings about what can be done and how it can be done, but how do you cope if you get 60,000 phone calls within the first six hours after an accident? How do you store that information? How do you satisfy those people? They may be in 15 countries. You might have 15 or 20 different origins on board. How do you handle those things?
Efforts are being made and staff has been dedicated and I know there are teams that they pull together very quickly and move to specific locations nearby. But I do not want dress rehearsals or anything like that. I am not terribly happy as yet. Generally, how do you feel about it?
Mr. Sowden: Speaking specifically for the company that I work for, our association has been very pleased at the efforts that have occurred internally to address the issue of dealing with survivors and dealing with our fellow employees who may be injured or killed. I have learned that there is also a collective effort by the Star Alliance carriers, of which Air Canada is a part; they have just had a meeting regarding a collective program whereby the carriers offer mutual aid to each other. For instance, if we were to have an accident in Germany, Luftansa would invoke their emergency procedures.
Also associated with that is a common standard of procedures. With the Star Alliance, for example, this is the game that you play to. Those are the rules. That is important, but it is being done for commercial reasons. How do you get a common standard around the world with all of the carriers? You would be a Nobel Prize winner if you could get that done. It is a very difficult issue.
But you are right: in a number of cases it has not been handled well and it needs further work. Thankfully, we do not get many occurrences on which to practise, and I should really like to keep it that way.
Senator Roberge: With the creation of NAV CANADA, do you feel that our safety has improved or diminished in the air traffic controller area?
Mr. Sowden: I also happen to sit on the NAV CANADA Advisory Committee, as does Mr. Psutka. We have at times expressed our concern that the air navigation system changes have caused us safety concerns, specifically their processes for adjusting service levels, how they do their risk analysis, their consultation. Those may have been less than adequate. They are working at trying to change. It is an evolutionary process for them.
Do I believe that the total level of safety has been reduced? I cannot honestly say that. Do I think that they have a lot of work to do? Oh yes, they have a lot of work to do. They have some wonderful, dedicated, hard-working people in their safety departments with whom I have had the pleasure of working, but they need to work very hard at producing a true safety culture within their organization, taking into account human factors.
For instance, we discussed flight and duty times. There are no legal duty time requirement regulations in Part 8 of the CARs for air traffic controllers. Why is it that I have a set of rules and they do not? I should really like to know that the person watching that I do not run into another airplane is well rested. He has equal responsibility. She has the same problems that I do, trying to stay awake at 2:00 o'clock in the morning. Let us make that safety system work.
But they are on a big quest to reduce costs. Safety costs money. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to put quantities on whether, by making a change, you have improved safety. The standard answer that comes from an accountant is, "You have not had an accident. You must be safe." It does not work that way. Based on the questions you have asked, you senators are obviously very knowledgeable about a number of matters, and I think you can well understand my position.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Sowden and Mr. Foster. We appreciate your appearance here very much. You have been helpful. We are grateful for your expertise.
Mr. Sowden: We look forward to seeing some positive changes in the future. I thank you for the excellent questions.
The Chairman: We welcome Mr. Kevin Psutka, who is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association, perhaps Canada's oldest national aviation association and one that I have very fond memories of going back to the mid-sixties.
Please go ahead with your presentation.
Mr. Kevin Psutka, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Owners and Pilots Association: I appreciate the opportunity to provide comments concerning the committee's interim report on transportation safety and security on behalf of the 17,000 members of the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association. Representing the interests of private aircraft owners and pilots, COPA is the largest pilot organization in Canada. Through membership on the board from specialized groups representing amateur builders, flying farmers, women pilots, seaplane pilots and ultralight pilots, COPA covers the broad spectrum of aviators who use aircraft for travel, business and recreation.
Among other responsibilities, COPA monitors changes in the transportation system as it affects the safety of pilots of small aircraft and their passengers. Through our Flight Safety Foundation, we also promote flight safety awareness for pilots, their passengers and the general public.
Because of the short time available, I will limit my remarks about your interim report to a few specific areas, but first I should like to make a general comment. Your report puts a great deal of emphasis on the commercial sector, but there is a larger number of aircraft and pilots operating privately that should be studied. According to Transport Canada statistics, there are 28,000 aircraft in Canada. Only 4 per cent of them are airline aircraft of the commuter turbo propeller type or higher. Of the total, 21,000 are privately registered and about 17,000 of them are aircraft with six seats or less.
Of the 54,000 pilots in Canada, 65 per cent are non-commercial and only 18 per cent hold transport ratings, the type that Captain Sowden uses to fly the airliners. There are over 700 airports or aerodromes in Canada, and only about 5 per cent of them are served by or are even accessible by larger commercial aircraft.
Without the many small aircraft on which maintainers apprentice or the hours that most aspiring pilots log while instructing student pilots, it would be impossible to produce sufficient personnel to keep our airlines in the air. And it is becoming more important as a source of personnel as the traditional sources, such as the military, decline. In other words, private aviation and small aircraft are a large portion and an important part of the national transportation network. If you come away from this briefing with one message, I should like it to be that the health and safety of the entire aviation industry is dependent upon maintaining a complete spectrum, including private aviation.
However, our sector is declining. That is due to a combination of increasing costs and unnecessary regulation, which are linked. Your report highlights the good safety record of aviation, including the fact that the rate of accidents has been declining. Certainly, compared with other forms of transportation, travel by small aircraft is far safer. However, increasing costs, including the government's emphasis on cost recovery and user pay, is resulting in reduced flying hours and some loss of proficiency. In order for this sector to maintain the necessary proficiency, pilots will have to fly more. That can only occur by reducing costs that are in large measure driven by the regulations. It is necessary for the government to fundamentally change the way it regulates this sector so that the overall costs decrease. Although some improvements have been made in the regulation of this sector, the impact on cost has not offset the overall increase.
I will use the proposed change to the regulation on emergency locator transmitters to illustrate my point. For several reasons, the International Civil Aviation Organization is proposing to require re-equipping aircraft with a new search and rescue beacon that costs an order of magnitude more than the current technology. For some aircraft, this cost represents as much as a quarter of the value of the aircraft. While there are some advantages to this new technology, the new devices have not been proven to improve appreciably the possibility of being found. To adopt the proposal as written would cost small aircraft owners in Canada $80 million, a cost that is difficult to absorb.
At a cost that is so high and with benefits that are not proven, many owners will simply not comply. Those who would comply with the new requirement would have to reduce spending in other areas, such as the numbers of hours that they fly each year, with a lowering of their proficiency. The importance of cost-benefit analyses for any change to a regulation of this sector is now more important than ever.
We are not advocating a reduction in safety. Rather, we are advocating a relaxation of the rules where they have not been proven to be useful in saving lives. Here is another example. COPA has been advocating for a change of medical standards for private pilots. Presently, we are subject to a medical exam every two years under age 40 and every year over age 40. In Britain, where they changed the standard to every five years some 12 years ago, they have experienced no increase in incapacitation accidents. That is documented; however, Transport Canada is reluctant to use that statistical evidence to relax our standard and save money for private pilots, money that could be applied to proficiency flying. We ask you to encourage Transport Canada to make some fundamental changes in the regulation of private aviation, and I would be pleased to help you with more examples of where we believe standards could safely be changed in order to reduce costs.
Recommendation 7 in your report proposes that a fund be established for highway building, repair and maintenance by setting aside a portion of the excise tax imposed on gasoline and that an infrastructure program be introduced to build and upgrade highways. The recommendation recognizes the importance of maintaining the existing road infrastructure and the role that the national government should play. This concept should also be applied to the airport infrastructure.
One of Transport Canada's proud achievements has been the devolution of airports via its national airports policy. While it has gone to great lengths to ensure that the transfer of the 28 major airports has gone smoothly, its goal with smaller airports appears to be to offload them with very little consideration for their survival. Although the words are there -- they say that the new owners will operate airports as airports well into the future -- we are already seeing signs that many of those airports are under severe strain from a lack of funding. They are realizing that the users of the airports do not have a capacity to pay the total amount needed.
Using Ontario airports as an example, prior to the devolution initiative, the proceeds from Toronto's Pearson airport went to support many regional airports that were owned by Transport Canada. That source of funding has disappeared. Lease payments from Pearson go into general revenues as before but because the government has devolved the smaller airports, it no longer funds them from those general revenues. In addition, the Ontario government has walked away from its long-standing airport financial support program, offloading the responsibility onto local governments, which are not prepared to take up the slack.
This approach to devolution has resulted in a lack of focus on the national transportation network beyond the 28 major airports. Although Transport Canada has a support program in place for funding improvements called the Airport Capital Assistance Program, it is woefully small and the number of airports that qualify for funding is very small. Of the $250 million that is collected in lease payments each year from the airports that have been transferred, only $37 million comes back to aviation through the ACAP. Although Transport Canada is reviewing the program, it will take a significant infusion of funds and a broader number of airports that qualify for funding in order to have a positive effect.
The aviation industry has long been united in urging the government to allocate the excise tax on aviation fuel to aviation uses. Most recently, the entire industry appealed to the government to reduce the tax considered as our contribution to the operation of the air navigation system so that NAV CANADA could introduce an equivalent fee. But the government so far has refused, resulting in an increase in cost for our sector while the government's costs, through the sale of the air navigation system, have substantially decreased. None of the millions of dollars collected for the 4 cent per litre excise tax on aviation turbine fuel and the 11 cent per litre excise tax on aviation gasoline is protected for use in the sector from which it is collected.
We have seen a significant increase in cost from the introduction or increase of landing fees at devolved airports and new fees for air navigation services, while the government's taxes on aviation remain at the same level and, through new and increased user fees, the government is collecting even more. This siphoning of revenue away from aviation from the lease payments and from the excise tax on fuel is indicative of an attitude that aviation is a cash cow. A cash cow is something you milk in order to feed some other priority, acknowledging that as a result, the cash cow will eventually die from lack of financial support.
What does this have to do with safety? Airports are and will close from a lack of adequate funding. There will be fewer options for operators of small aircraft when the weather unexpectedly deteriorates. Some airports that survive will have to compromise with deteriorated facilities, which will pose safety risks for pilots and their passengers. Private pilots will continue to fly less frequently, thereby losing some of their proficiency as they spend their after-tax, available resources on fees instead of flying.
We urge the committee to recommend that money collected from aviation be spent on the aviation infrastructure. That is not a new concept. Look south of the border at the U.S. Aviation Trust Fund. It does just that. The fund ensures that the money collected from aviation, including fuel taxes and airport revenues, are earmarked for spending on aviation. Also, unlike most provinces, the emphasis by many state governments is on the upgrading and expansion of airports.
I recommend that you study those examples and then urge the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Finance to make rebuilding of our airport infrastructure a major priority in addition to the efforts for highway improvements. Look at it this way. A mile of road takes you one mile. A mile of runway takes you to the world.
An illustration of the government's diminishing concern for the air transportation infrastructure, especially for our sector, is the attempt to close the important airstrips at Banff and Jasper. Those airstrips were constructed in the 1930s to fill the need for safe landing spots for aircraft flying through the mountains. Although most airliners can now safely transit the area above the mountains, many small aircraft continue to be restricted to the few mountain passes because they do not have the capability to climb above. The route over Banff and Jasper is the most heavily used route. We need places to land in the event that unpredictable weather deteriorates. Despite COPA's safety concerns, based on the experience of thousands of pilots, the Heritage Minister insisted on closing the airstrips and the Transport Minister supported her decision. COPA had to go to court in order to block the closures and protect the safety of the travelling public. We had to do Transport's job for them.
Your report highlights a concern expressed by the British Columbia Aviation Council concerning the degradation of weather services. Automated weather observation systems, or AWOS, were introduced in order to replace human observers with what was advertised as an equivalent level of safety at less cost. COPA has opposed this system because of its demonstrated failure to report the weather accurately, especially those facets such as ceiling and visibility that are so important to our members who primarily fly by reference to the ground rather than by instruments. While your report highlights the problems on the West Coast, I should like to emphasize that the problem is nationwide.
COPA continues to oppose AWOS as the sole means of reporting the weather. We are concerned that we have had to insist that the brakes be put on the installation of the system. That should be Transport Canada's job. Check the record dating back to before NAV CANADA, and you will find that Transport introduced the system without ensuring that it met the safety needs of the users. NAV CANADA inherited the system and tried to continue reducing human observations and introducing the flawed AWOS. Coupled with government efforts to destaff lighthouses on the West Coast, the problem has been highlighted there.
Another weather-related safety issue is the effort to make Environment Canada a profit centre. Information such as the latest available radar and satellite photos is routinely delayed from the Internet briefing sites so that they can sell this information to users who are willing to pay. These tools, developed with taxpayer money, are being withheld from those who could most benefit from them. This is in marked contrast to the United States, where this safety information is readily available. We recognize that timely information is important to safety. Transport Canada somehow accepts that this information is not necessary unless we are willing to pay for it.
Sparse weather reporting, navigation aids and communication facilities in remote areas are also a concern. So much of this country is accessible only by small aircraft and those aircraft fly at relatively low altitudes. There is very little radio coverage at those altitudes for flight following and, while we appreciate the difficulty in providing sufficient coverage in terms of the cost, environmental impact and technology, some initiatives by NAV CANADA, such as the closure of flight service stations and the centralization of many functions at other stations, may seriously degrade the minimal safety net that has been in place. Removal of these facilities will have little or no impact on the very large aircraft flying at high altitudes that have their own dispatch and flight following systems to provide a level of safety. But the many thousands of small aircraft will be affected.
The attitude appears to be that if you want the service you will have to pay. I do not think that is the correct approach. Just as it is acknowledged that health care subsidization is important overall for the country, support for the transportation infrastructure, including weather, navigation and communication systems, must be a national priority that is supported financially by the government.
We agree with your finding that a number of significant changes are occurring all at the same time. Our concern is that there are too many changes occurring at the same time. Users have complained about the number of changes that NAV CANADA is proposing being introduced as aeronautical studies. The ability of users to provide sufficient resources to address all of the initiatives is being pushed beyond the limit. The process of change must be slowed down so that users can participate effectively and the effect of each change on the whole system can be adequately assessed.
I caution the committee to be careful when assessing the safety programs of other countries. While some of them are commendable, others have caused the decline of general aviation to the point that it is insignificant. Take Europe as an example. The cost of small aircraft flying and the restrictions on airspace and operating procedures have forced general aviation to the ground. We must keep in mind the importance of general aviation in this vast country where no other means of access is possible. Cost recovery and user pay, coupled with the desires of commercial air carriers under the guise of safety, must not be permitted to restrict our sector into non-existence. Look at nations where small aircraft are virtually non-existent, like South Korea. They have to rely on foreign pilots to meet their airline needs. I hope that this is not where we are headed. Initiatives such as the expansion of controlled airspace, equipment requirements and procedures are difficult for our sector to absorb. There are alternatives available at much lower cost that achieve adequate separation of aircraft while providing access to airports and airspace.
We agree with your report's look at the future, including your endorsement of Mr. Heuttner's observation that the movement to new technology will require significant investment of financial resources. It will require support from government, industry and the public. We are doing our part through the payment of fees and our continuing payment of excise taxes. I should like to emphasize that in the effort to downsize, offload and cost recover, the government may be losing sight of its responsibility for financial support of aviation, including the infrastructure in support of the private aircraft sector.
I have listed a number of recommendations that just repeat what I said in summary, and I will not repeat those here. I thank you for the opportunity to comment on the report. I am available for questions.
Senator Roberge: I agree with you that there is a concern with regard to NAV CANADA closing some of those weather stations. We have had a number of small plane accidents recently in Quebec and in the Gaspé not too long ago. They are trying to close another station at Dorval. Certain parts of the country have specific weather situations or unusual weather patterns. Perhaps you could elaborate a little on that to give us more guidelines.
Mr. Psutka: Certainly. We highlighted in here and you highlighted in your report that they have unique weather systems up and down the West Coast that make the provision of weather services more critical than in some other areas of the country. The main problem is that while the weather may be suitable at a particular station at a particular point in time, a few miles away approaching weather, such as fog on coastal areas, can very quickly change the weather considerably.
Automated systems look at only a very small parcel of air. For example, they manufacture the visibility by looking at one patch of air for a distance of several feet. Ceiling is measured by looking straight up from the measuring device. The automated system does not look around the sky the way a human observer would for both visibility and ceiling.
Senator Roberge: The concerns have been recognized on the two coasts, but you have some other situations that are inland, for which NAV CANADA does not seem to have the same sort of outlook towards safety. That is the feeling I have.
Mr. Psutka: That is definitely true. The weather is different throughout the country but so are the needs of the users. There is a high percentage of visual flight operations taking place on either coast concentrated in bands up and down the coast, whereas in the interior it starts out in major centres but fans out into very small operations over vast distances. It is difficult to provide a network that is sufficient to give the same level of service and safety in the interior of the country as it is along some of the coastal areas. That is strictly because of the vast area that is to be covered.
The initiative of NAV CANADA is to try to centralize as much as possible the provision of both weather services and flight services. They now have a study in place -- and we will hear the full details of that as the summer goes on -- to reorganize the traditional way of providing flight services. Traditionally, a station gives you flight planning, weather briefing, en route monitoring of airplanes and all of the services related to the airport itself, like vehicle control on the ground and advisories about air traffic and that sort of thing; they now want to split that up. Certain stations will retain the function of providing the airport-related information, like where the airplanes are and who is on the ground, and that sort of thing, but the other functions -- the flight information service, the flight planning, the weather briefings, the en route monitoring, and that sort of thing, will be moved to three or four central locations in Canada.
Quebec City is earmarked as one of those stations; however, a station like Robertsonville, for example, may close completely or may become what is called an airport advisory service, where there would be roughly half the number of people as at present. With respect to the traffic at the airport, there will be somebody there to answer the phone, but when it comes to calling for a weather briefing, even at Robertsonville, you cannot ask one of those people for that. You would be referred to Quebec City and get the briefing from them.
Senator Roberge: In order to get the information, many of those planes have to fly higher, because they cannot get it if they are flying too low.
Mr. Psutka: They will have a repeater station for Quebec City at Robertsonville, so when you are on the ground you can call Quebec City and they will hear you. That sort of thing is already taking place in patches throughout the country.
One of the difficulties -- and this is a safety issue -- is that when Transport Canada started what they called their "modernization" program, when they were in charge of the air navigation system, that was actually a misnomer. It was not modernization. It was rationalization. The flight service stations at that time were the same throughout the country. Every place that had one had exactly the same services as all the others.
Then they began to dismantle the system, and they created all kinds of acronyms for what was left. The method for the average pilot to get a briefing, depending on where you were in the country, whether you were in the air or on the ground, changed. In fact, there was not a particular telephone number that you could call from anywhere in the country to get a weather briefing. It depended on what region you were in, and that sort of thing.
NAV CANADA, to do them credit, inherited a real mixture of stations and methods of delivering the service, and they are attempting to correct that to provide something uniform for both the coastal and the central regions of Canada alike. Unfortunately, wrapped up in that is a desire to significantly cut costs. Those two goals fly in the face of each other in many respects. What we may end up with, if we are not careful, is a system that, although it is much better system in terms of what you get, because you will be able to pick up the phone in Halifax or in Chibougamau and get the same level of service, might just not be all that available.
Senator Roberge: What are you doing as an association in order to improve the safety of your members, the safety of the individual pilots?
Mr. Psutka: As I mentioned in the presentation, we have as part of our association the Flight Safety Foundation. That is a fund which runs on the charitable donations of our members. From that fund we provide articles in our newspaper. There are a number of flight safety articles where the contributors are paid for from that fund.
We also run a series of aviation safety seminars across the country throughout the year, sometimes exclusively given by us, other times sponsored by us but given by Transport Canada. We try to get our pilot groups together as much as we can to disseminate safety information other than in the form that they traditionally get it, which is the safety letters from Transport Canada. We put our spin on it to help emphasize the need for those safety initiatives.
In addition to that, I am constantly using the telephone and the e-mail every day reviewing the accident statistics and the daily reports that come in on incidents and that sort of thing, and I filter all of that to see if there are trends, from my perspective, in general aviation that need to be brought to the attention of our members. For instance, we had a rash of misfueling problems a number of years ago and we spent a lot of time educating our members on the colour and smell of fuel, because they had forgotten. There had also been a major change around that time in the way fuel was dispensed that caused a problem.
We keep tabs on that sort of thing and we inform our members as we see safety issues arising from our review of the information, and we also draw that to the attention of either the Transportation Safety Board or Transport Canada. We do that as we perceive a safety issue. It does not always come from them first.
Senator Roberge: But the fund, you say, is based on charitable donations?
Mr. Psutka: Yes.
Senator Roberge: There has been no increase for that purpose, for example, in the fee to be a member? Is a portion or a percentage of the fee to be a member allotted to that fund to develop more programs for safety?
Mr. Psutka: No. The proceeds are strictly in addition to your membership and it is completely voluntary.
Senator Roberge: I have the impression that we are seeing more accidents involving ultralights, or at least a lot of accidents are reported on ultralights.
Mr. Psutka: Ultralights are a sector of aviation that started out being completely unregulated; there was absolutely no regulation whatsoever. Of course, at the beginning that was not unreasonable, because they were low-speed, low-weight, low-altitude devices used in a way that could be likened to water skiing or downhill skiing, and if you caused damage, it was normally to yourself and had very little impact on other people. However, because of the cost of aviation going up, a lot of people are making a transition from more conventional ways of flying aircraft to using ultralights. That is why there is an increase in the rate of accidents with ultralights.
As I have already pointed out, if you look at the statistics from Transport Canada on the number of aircraft in the country, we are in a decline. The number is not declining at a rate that would, statistically, reflect that there is a problem, but if you break the statistics down and take ultralight aviation away from the rest of general aviation, you will see that general aviation airplanes are disappearing in droves and ultralight aircraft are increasing in numbers to take their place.
Along with that is the fact that the sophistication of these aircraft is increasing. People are finding ingenious ways of making what you and I would think of as a conventional aircraft look, smell, and talk like, and in fact be registered as, an ultralight aircraft. Consequently, they are bumping up against traditional conventional aviation in terms of weight, performance, speed and the amount of weight they can carry. In fact, it has reached the point where, within Transport Canada, we are discussing ways to sort out the types of aircraft that are out there.
We used to have ultralight and conventional aircraft or what we called certified aircraft. There are now basic ultralights, advanced ultralights, amateur-built ultralights and certified aircraft. You can take a kit for an ultralight aircraft and, depending on how you build it, inspect it and register it, it can a basic ultralight, an advanced ultralight or an amateur-built aircraft. Depending on how you are licensed to fly it, you can fly it with a single person on board or you can take a passenger.
In fact, in recent years the process has almost been reversed, in the sense that you can take a very light but certified aircraft like a Piper Cub that has been written off -- say you find one in a bushel basket somewhere that has been completely destroyed or torn apart or written off -- and you can rebuild it as an ultralight. In other words, you could have one properly certified Piper Cub, a nice, little, yellow fabric-covered airplane sitting on an airstrip, for which you would have to have a private pilot's licence or a recreational permit to fly it, and sitting right next to it you could have another registered as an ultralight, with far less certification requirements, and you could fly that with an ultralight permit.
Senator Roberge: In your report you say that your industry is over-regulated. Are the ultralights also over-regulated or is there really not enough regulation?
Mr. Psutka: There are two answers to that. To go back to what I just said, if the people in the ultralight community continue to push the sophistication of their aircraft, they are inviting regulation. We are going to be meeting in two weeks in Ottawa. A major step forward, as far as Transport Canada is concerned, is to allow passenger-carrying in an ultralight with an ultralight permit. Right now there is a minimum standard for carrying a passenger. The ultralight industry is building the case that, with some minor changes to the way they are permitted -- I am not going to say licensed, because they do not have a licence; they have a permit -- but with some minor changes to the way they are permitted to fly the aircraft, they will be allowed to carry passengers in what is right now the advanced ultralight aircraft. It is getting more complicated; let us put it that way.
The Chairman: How do you lump the experimental aircraft in with the various classifications of ultralights?
Mr. Psutka: The amateur-built aircraft is a completely different case. Amateur-built aircraft are inspected to standards as they are being built. There is a rigorous program maintained by or overseen by the industry. They have their own inspectors from the Recreational Aircraft Association, but the inspections are done under the auspices and supervision of Transport Canada, and that provides a measure of safety throughout the building process for those aircraft.
Indeed, if you look at some of the aircraft now being built by so-called "amateurs", the sophistication and safety of those aircraft far exceeds that of the 30- and 40-year-old aircraft that are now being flown as certified aircraft. Their performance is much better and their level of safety is much better, and they are able to achieve that simply because they do not have to go through the onerous and costly certification requirements.
To give you a case in point, I bought a new Ford Windstar this year. I am sure that there are no fewer than ten different computers in that car to tell me exactly what the fuel level is, and exactly how the machine is performing, in adjusting the temperatures and fuel flows and everything else to give me the maximum performance out of that car. That is just a car. There is nothing like that in certified aircraft. Why not? Because the certification costs are so high that the manufacturers do not want to go through the hoops of making it happen.
It has reached the point now that the certified aircraft are -- I will not say less safe, but they are certainly less sophisticated than some of the amateur-built aircraft and certainly a lot more expensive than the amateur-built aircraft that are out there.
The Chairman: I never did see the year-end statistics, but in the first ten months of last year 82 ultralights and experimental aircraft in the United States crashed, but no one was injured. The planes landed quite lightly, simply with the deployment of structural parachute. For some reason, when certain things happen in life you are struck by them and deeply impressed; the one that has struck me is this structural parachute. My committee colleagues laugh at me when I talk about putting such a device on 747s, for example, but the technology is almost there; however, apparently it would take too many of them on such a large aircraft. I guess we have to start out much more modestly.
As a rule, do the pilots of ultralights join COPA?
Mr. Psutka: There are more members of COPA flying ultralights than in any of the other ultralight organizations. It is not a requirement to join COPA, but the number is significant.
The Chairman: What would the members in your organization think of the concept of having regulations such as, No. 1: Do not hit anybody; No. 2: Blue side is up; No. 3: Use a parachute. What would they think about that?
Mr. Psutka: The reason that we would not support it is primarily demonstrated by the most recent light aircraft to be certified in the United States, and that is the Cirrus aircraft; it comes with a standard, deployable parachute. When everything else goes wrong, you can pull the parachute and come down to land. It is purpose-built.
When I was at the exposition for aircraft owners and pilots last year, I had the opportunity to talk to the designer of that aircraft. I got into the nuts and bolts about what it costs to incorporate that into the aircraft. In terms of the certification and everything else that went into making that, it represented about 15 per cent of the cost of the aircraft to put that in place.
As far as retrofitting existing aircraft -- and we are not going to see a major change in the fleet for the foreseeable future considering the cost of new aircraft -- it is impossible to retrofit aircraft for those parachutes because of the structural changes that would have to be made. Where you would have to make the structural changes in a light aircraft is in such a critical area that you might as well tear the airplane apart and start over from scratch. Putting in the type of restraint necessary to hold the parachute up, plus the weight of course, is a major consideration.
I could relate that to something that is a little closer to home. You could look at any accident statistic to show that shoulder harnesses have saved many lives. So many people have lost their lives in what should have been a survivable accident simply because their head came forward and smashed into the instrument panel, particularly in a rollover accident in water and that sort of thing. Their lives would have been saved without a doubt if they had on a shoulder harness. Yet the cost of retrofitting and the technology, to a certain extent for some of the aircraft, to put in a simple thing like a shoulder harness bracket behind you in the aircraft is prohibitive. It would destroy the structural integrity of the aircraft just to drill holes where you would have to put those things in. On the same basis, there are some technological limitations to putting a parachute in.
There is one other related factor there. Certainly, there will be lives saved if you have that ability to deploy a parachute to get out of your situation. We just went through another debate -- this is about the third time in the last 30 years -- about whether you should actually train private pilots to recognize and recover from spins. They have made a decision at Transport Canada, which will become effective in July of this year, to take spins off the curriculum, except for demonstrating them, and put a lot more concentration on the approach to the stall, so you recognize when you are about to get there, but forget about the rest of it.
The reason for that decision was that, in looking at accident statistics over the last ten years it became evident that people are not dying from stalling and spinning down from a high altitude. Of the 39 stall-and-spin accidents over the last ten years in Canada, for only one of them could they definitely say that it might have been averted had the pilot been able to recover from that spin. The rest of them were too low for any attempt at recovery. They were already going to crash when they entered the spin.
The same thing applies to the issue of parachutes in light aircraft. People do not tend to get in trouble at higher altitudes, except perhaps if they run into thunderstorms. That is what rips wings off airplanes and that sort of thing. The vast majority of accidents occur close to the ground from flying into deteriorating weather, or just simply running into the ground on approach or takeoff, when you are close to the limits of the aircraft in terms of its stall speed, and a parachute is not going to help you there. You are going to hit the ground before it can stop you.
The parachute is an experiment on Cirrus' part. The FAA is watching very closely to see whether there is any success or, even more to the point, if there are any problems with that technology in terms of people pushing their limits knowing that they have that parachute strapped to them. That is the other side of that coin.
The Chairman: If there were a change in the metal so that it could absorb the holes, then you would be into another piece of equipment. It is not the same thing. I appreciate that. However, some day we will have parachutes on planes. In the old days they built fences around airports so that people would not walk into propellers. We still build fences around airports, but now it is not to protect the people, but to protect the planes.
You were present when we were questioning the Air Canada Pilots Association; we were talking about a number of safety-related issues. Perhaps the most vital question was: Where do you start? I wondered if it had occurred to them that the Aeronautics Act under which they operate is now well into its seventies and should perhaps be scrapped and replaced? It was a rather interesting discussion and they were somewhat animated, if I may use that term.
Mr. Psutka: I did work for the Airline Pilots Association prior to taking my present job, so I have seen both sides of the coin, so to speak, but in the years that I have been in this business I have only dealt with one aspect of the act, and that is the minister's responsibilities. I dealt with that both in the context of the airline pilots and in the context of the private pilots. It has been exclusively the minister's written mandate in the act to promote aeronautics.
In my comments today I am referring to that part of the act. The words are there, but I am not so sure that they are being complied with in many respects. If we have to go to court on a safety issue, is that really our job or is the minister supposed to be doing that? The point is that that is the only part of the act that I have ever dealt with. I deal with the regulations 99.9 per cent of the time. More to the point, it is not so much the regulations themselves, as it is the standards that flow from them, because that is what everybody is trying to live by. The average operator out there has never seen the act, or read the act, or had a copy of it put in front of him. It might be in the library somewhere; it is in our place somewhere, but it has a lot of dust on it.
They are down two levels below that, trying to make ends meet and trying to make a buck at the same time as they are trying to live within the regulations. The act is way up there in somebody else's domain. I would defy you to find any aviation business owner in this country who has ever looked at the act. From that standpoint it is probably irrelevant. Mind you, it is not irrelevant from the fact that everything flows from that act and that, without it, the rest of it is not there. But beyond that purpose, should it be serving another purpose?
The Chairman: That is precisely the point. This is the millennium. Surely, we are entitled to protection under the law that you do not have under regulations. There would be a significant change, an attitudinal change in the courts and in the processing and in all of the legal areas surrounding transportation generally, and aviation particularly, were there to be an act as opposed to regulations and, indeed, the absence of even a useful consolidation of the regulations.
You made a point about the excise tax on the fuels at both levels. If you had 4 per cent of that dedicated to the non-significant airports, those who have devolved down or which always have been municipal airports, and I am thinking about the modified services that could be made available at reasonable cost if there was some source of revenue, how far would it go toward alleviating some of your concerns?
Mr. Psutka: Several of the airport commissions that I have sat on in the past couple of years, regional airports of the size of Oshawa and Kitchener, are at the point of trying to make ends meet as mandated through the taxpayer in the local area. They are not all that far off from making it happen if they had a good infusion of money from somewhere else other than the users of the airport and the taxpayers in the immediate vicinity.
In my estimation, when we were putting this position together for the government on the releasing of the fuel excise tax for NAV CANADA, putting an equivalent fee in, we were looking at about four cents to five cents from the fuel excise tax on both the turbine and the gasoline to be handed over as significant contribution to the air navigation system. I do not remember the exact numbers now, but it was in the order of several hundred million dollars that it was going to generate.
The Chairman: That is a lot of money. That would buy a lot of services.
Mr. Psutka: The entire fuel excise tax on all fuel in Canada is $4.06 billion. That amount is collected from the entire fuel excise tax. That is on car gasoline, turbine, diesel, everything. It comes to $4.06 billion. To be honest, that was really the stumbling block for the Finance Minister to give any ground to aviation, despite the fact that it was the entire industry. It also raised the issue, which was acknowledged by some senior levels within the Department of Finance, although you will not see it in writing anywhere, that perhaps general taxation of that sort has outlived its usefulness now that we are in the user-pay, user-say, user-fee era in this country.
If you look at the various fees out there, they are all directed fees or taxes, if you want to use that word. They are collected by an airport to be put into the runways on that airport, and that sort of thing. The airport improvement fee, which you are about to see announced here in Ottawa, is exactly that: it is a tax for all intents and purposes.
In an era in which the effort has been to reduce the deficit in this country and we have made the transition to the concept, and people are becoming more comfortable with the concept, of user pay, these general taxes are becoming less relevant certainly in terms of the fact that we are still paying them, yet we have these other ones that do essentially the same thing. In our case we are still paying the excise fuel tax on gasoline, part of which we consider to be our contribution to the air navigation system. And we have a new fee introduced by NAV CANADA on top of that, which is double taxation, plus the GST on top of both of those.
Mr. Miller: When your association went to court on the issue of the Jasper and Banff airports, did you win your case based on safety?
Mr. Psutka: It was a mixture. Certainly the safety issue was there. The judge mentioned it in his decision, but the judge's primary decision was on the basis of the reason that they closed the airports. They closed the airports on environmental grounds without a proper environmental assessment. However, he did say in his finding words to the effect that he found it to be unusual that such a large group of pilots would be opposed to closing on the basis of safety and, yet, the Transport Minister and the Heritage Minister completely ignored that. It was just an observation rather than a reason for him making up his mind.
We are in a period of reprieve now. The airports are effectively closed, because you are not allowed to land there normally, but if you have a problem or you are forced to land there because the weather is deteriorating, there are no punitive measures taken against you. In fact, the parks are taking very good care of those two grass strips in order to ensure that they do not get into trouble if somebody tries to land there and they roll over or whatever.
Mr. Miller: What percentage of your members are involved in transportation for hire?
Mr. Psutka: That is very difficult to say, because we do not ask them to give us very much information about who they are. Anyone can be a member of COPA regardless of whether or not he or she is a pilot. That is relatively new. You used to have to at least be a pilot. There are a fair percentage, though, that are COPA members who run the mom-and-pop flying outfits and the small float-flying outfits simply because there is no one else out there to represent them. They are members of our association primarily for the information that it provides and for the insurance benefits that we provide them -- group insurance.
Mr. Miller: Do they in fact provide a service to the travelling public for a fee?
Mr. Psutka: Yes.
Mr. Miller: To get back to your very early complaint about the exorbitant costs of the locator, for example, it is not a case of charging you all these costs and you only hurt yourself. You in fact hurt the travelling public.
Mr. Psutka: Definitely. The case that was made earlier about the provision of ELTs on turbine jet aircraft is a contentious one for the operators, because I will correct one thing that Captain Sowden said. He said it would cost in the order of $300 or so to put an ELT in a small aircraft now. It is not that way for any large aircraft. It is in the order of $20,000 to put one in a larger aircraft. The case that the Air Transport Association is making against that regulation is that it is not proven to appreciably change the outcome of a lot of accidents, including the one at Fredericton. But that is debatable. There are arguments on both sides of that fence.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Psutka.
Mr. Psutka: I appreciate being given the opportunity to bring our concerns forward.
The committee adjourned.