The US Airline Pilots Association representing all of US Airways pilots is calling for the resignation of US Airways Vice President of Safety and Regulatory Compliance Paul Morell citing unaddressed lapses in safety as the primary reason.

This is what happens when you don’t have respectable relations with your labor union groups.  Safety is popular target for airline unions because it is very difficult for the airline to address the topic without appearing to be on the defense for something that may not have even been going on.

And airline unions target their company when they haven’t gotten a deal and it looks as if they aren’t going to get one soon.  It applies pressure. 

Is US  Airways unsafe?  No, it isn’t.  The airline is clearly running a safe operation.  Whether or not it could be even safer is a question I cannot answer (and nor can the airline pilots either.)  That calls for an objective third party audit of US Airways safety.  Coincidentally, it appears that US Airways declined to participate in such a study because that is what USAPA talks about in its public complaints.

I am a big advocate for there being as much transparency and objectivity possible in evaluating safety at airlines.  I think participation in programs where pilots can self report safety incidents without consequence is an excellent idea and I firmly believe that airlines should participate wherever possible in third party studies. 

That said, US Airways may have had an excellent reason for declining participation and we’ll leave that up to them for a response.

I have to take a shot at USAPA for this:  It is no less responsible to make safety a political issue than it is for an airline to decline participation in third party safety studies.  There are plenty of issues to talk about but casting aspersions on the safety of airline to apply pressure is over the line.

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