Below the report by your BeCA Vice-President of the main events that happened in TUIFly Belgium since the first edition of 2016 of our Cockpit Flash.

Last autumn the name of our Company changed from “Jetairfly” to “TUIFly Belgium”.

This was an important event in the history of our airline and was accompanied by several festivities and campaigns.

Other important facts with less attention also happened around this period:

Flight Data Monitoring, Reporting and Just Culture

In November 2016, an election was held to choose an FDM Pilot Representative.

By law, the FDM Pilot Representative shall witness that all actions around FDM are correctly executed in order to respect the procedures and to guarantee confidentiality.
In most airlines, this pilot is a representative of the (pilot) union.

Our Management decided to take a different approach and wanted to have an independent pilot for this position.

This procedure is different than in most other companies, but at least we were able to vote for our representatives.

You may think that this election is not important…

But how would you like to be treated in case of an incident?

• In a Just Culture environment, it is important that we as pilots can be able to trust the system.
• In a Just Culture environment, we learn from our mistakes.
• Reporting is the key point, which makes this possible.
• We will only report correctly if we trust the system.
• If we know that we will not be blamed for errors, and that these errors will be dealt with in a correct way, we can improve the safety together.

This is why pilots should also be involved in the Just Culture Policy of their company.

What is the right thing to do in case of an incident or accident?

What serves the safety of the company and what should we do with the involved pilots? How will an error be categorized?

What will happen after an incident?

To answer all these questions, pilot representatives can help build confidence in an open and transparent system.

This system should encourage reporting by accepting that in most cases human error points at a failure of the system and that we should consider the context instead of blaming the individual. After all, just culture assumes that nobody comes to work to do a bad job.

Of course, determining whether an error was gross negligence or a willful act is not always easy.

What makes the difference between an intentional violation, which is not acceptable, and an honest mistake, which is acceptable?

It is not only important where to draw the line, but also who draws the line.

A Just Culture Review committee, involving delegates from both the company and labour association(s) is in our opinion the best way to go.

Social Dialogue at TUIFly

In the coming months, the challenges will remain high in our company, with again an increased capacity planned for the summer season.

To face these challenges, it is important that there is a good social dialogue.

The social dialogue in our company however has not been very constructive lately.

This is why we organized a poll asking for your support.

The reply to this poll was massive and shows that a majority of the pilot community agrees that it is time we take action to improve the social dialogue.

We received 130 replies total, of which 17 replies were invalid. 73 captains and 40 First Officers gave valid responses and the result was very clear (90.7% are in favor of support for potential social inspection, 97.7% are in favor of support for potential conciliation procedures).

We hope that the result will be a wakeup call for our management to restart serious negotiations about our concerns.

Some important points we urgently have to find a solution for:

• Implementation of a ‘Just Culture Policy’ together, as required by law
• A better part-time system and arrangements for 45+
• Stopping to plan our rest during W and V days
• Improved conditions for long missions, and clear communication about it
• Better communication
• A transparent baremic system for all pilots
• Equally distributed rosters
• Increased per diem

Finally, may I use this opportunity to thank you all for your cooperation and wish you the best for 2017.

Delphine Saive, Vice-President TUIFly BE