Pilots’ strike action is not just about salaries

sir – Reports on the British Airline Pilots’ Association’s strike actions (August 24), which highlight senior pilots demanding higher salaries, miss the underlying causes of existing and planned flight-crew strikes.

Striking is not just about wages. Airline captains are ultimately responsible for millions of pounds worth of kit and – much more importantly – hundreds of lives. Most pilots stay with British employers for reasons of home, family and friends, but their rosters increasingly involve minimum rest times of 12 hours between signing off and signing on again.

Despite this, pilots can be urged to go into “discretion” time when flights are delayed by inevitabilities such as severely congested airports and bad weather, in order to avoid flight cancellations that are bad for both passengers and their employer’s bottom line.

Exhausted pilots on the last sector of a five-day roster are more prone to mistakes, and they know it. They can declare fatigue as a reason not to fly, but this is not encouraged, as airlines ensure each aircraft’s maximum earning capacity by minimising their time on the ground.

Fair air-crew wages, based on both responsibility and supply and demand, are vital. Equally important are working conditions, which, if they routinely include fatigue, are not safe

Airlines will only run healthy and safe rosters if forced to by legal obligation; the existing Eu/civil Aviation Authority regulations are no longer fit for purpose and should be urgently changed. Airlines would then either have to recruit more pilots or to reduce the number of flights, to keep both flight crews and passengers as safe as possible.

Dr Peter N Sander

Hythe, Kent