Cost-cutting measure fuels debate at American Airlines - Company directive to fly with less fuel angers pilots, worries safety experts

Cost-cutting measure fuels debate at American Airlines - Company directive to fly with less fuel angers pilots, worries safety experts
By Jon Hilkevitch and Julie Johnsson
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
June 27, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/ct-biz-0627-pilots-fuel-20100626,0,2516875,full.story



Hoping to push the needle closer to "E,'' American Airlines is aggressively attempting to reduce the amount of fuel remaining on board when a plane lands.

But the cost-saving strategy is under fire from pilots who see their decision-making authority being undercut and experts concerned about the impact on passenger safety.

The controversy goes beyond American as other airlines keep a close watch or implement changes in fuel-loading policy. Commuter carriers that fly most of the nation's regional jets, the fastest-growing segment in the industry, warrant a particular focus, according to experts. The commuter airlines face the strongest pressures to curb operating costs, and their flight crews rank among the least-experienced professional pilots.

American has taken the spotlight as its management spars with the airline's pilots and dispatchers over who determines how much fuel a plane needs to reach its destination, a call traditionally made by the flight's captain.

The dispute centers on tremendously sensitive issues for airlines and pilots: control, safety and money.

While no one is warning that the fuel-conservation effort could put commercial aircraft in danger of running out of fuel in midair, the issue is whether sophisticated data bases designed to help the airline control one of its largest expenses should outweigh the judgment of American's front-line staff with years of experience. No computer program can reasonably take into account the variables and nuances that pilots and dispatchers process as they prepare for a flight, some experts say.

It's a balancing act. The more excess fuel that is carried in flight, the more fuel gets burned. While American's pilots are not arguing that the tanks should be topped off before every flight, there is an intense debate over how closely to number-crunch the amount of fuel needed to complete a flight, including the use of precious reserve fuel, which is calculated in minutes of flying time.

"We feel that we have been so scientifically precise about what we need on a given flight that we want the captains to trust us," American spokesman Tim Wagner said. "Too much extra fuel doesn't provide an extra margin of safety, but it does take money off our bottom line."

Federal Aviation Administration regulations mandate that a plane's captain and flight dispatcher have joint responsibility for determining how much fuel to load onto an aircraft, although the captain ultimately determines whether a plane can be safely flown.

But in a May 24 letter to pilots obtained by the Tribune, American flight operations chief Bart Roberts made it clear that pilots are expected to "accept the flight plan as fueled by the dispatcher."

Pilots who think they'll need more fuel must make their case in writing.

"This isn't a directive to not add fuel or to restrict the captain's authority," Wagner said. "We just want to hear from pilots if they feel the dispatcher has miscalculated or they flag something that we need to take a look at."

Union leaders claim that's intimidation, because the now-required paperwork, called a P-2 form, is tracked by American's management and could be used against the pilot if his or her job performance is ever called into question.

"It's being touted as a corporate efficiency program, but perhaps it has gone too far," said Dennis Tajer, an American pilot and spokesman for its pilots union, the Allied Pilots Association. "It has the ability to affect the margin of safety and reliability. That is our concern."

American planes are landing with enough fuel to fly an additional 93 minutes on average, airline officials said. The goal is to whittle the average down over the course of a year, they said. Extra fuel is always allocated during bad weather, they said, and to account for the probability that planes will be placed in holding patterns near congested airports, among other factors.

"In an excellent weather month, we've gotten down to around 88 (minutes)," but never below that on average, Wagner said.

American's policy to have a minimum of 65 minutes of fuel left at the end of a flight is well above the FAA requirement for a minimum of 45 minutes of fuel remaining on domestic arrivals and 30 minutes on international arrivals.

"The idea that you should never burn into your reserve fuel is a misperception," Wagner said. "It is there to be used if needed. But that said, we burn into our reserve fuel less than 0.2 percent of the time."

Passengers might wonder how the controversy affects them. Is there a chance their plane will exhaust its fuel supply?

"No, that's not going to happen," said US Airways Capt. James Ray, who is also a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, the largest pilots union in the U.S. "But it is an inconvenience if a flight is diverted."

Aeronautics professor Les Westbrooks said the situation at American is troubling because it signals a further chipping away of the captain's authority, while the captain's responsibility for the safety of everyone on board hasn't changed.

"Everybody wants to tell the captain what to do, but if something goes wrong, it will be the captain who will lose his or her license," said Westbrooks, a retired Air Force and airline pilot who is an associate professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.

He disagreed with American's assessment regarding reserve fuel. "Reserve fuel should not be touched," he said. "It is there for reserve."

Westbrooks said passengers should not be overly concerned about the fuel crunch issue, although there are potential safety ramifications that can go undetected until a problem arises, he said.

He cited two recent cases involving pilots flying for regional airlines — American Eagle Airlines and Trans States Airlines — who taxied their planes from the gate to runways with only one engine activated — a common fuel-conservation initiative practiced by most airlines. But the commuter pilots, who typically had less flight experience than their counterparts at major airlines, forgot to start the second engine before takeoff. The pilots aborted the takeoffs when cockpit warning systems notified them of a problem and the planes exited the runways without flying, according to FAA investigations.

Since a fuel spike in 2008 threatened the industry with financial collapse, most major U.S. airlines have tried to better manage their fuel costs. American, United Airlines and US Airways have all culled flight data to better calibrate the amount of fuel loaded onto a plane to what historically has been consumed on the route based on traffic and weather conditions. The airline assessments take into consideration the different types of engines used on the same model aircraft.

The amounts in dispute tend to be small: about 15 minutes of added reserves that pilots say they need to deal with heavy traffic, turbulence or other factors, sources said. But trimming even small amounts of fuel from every flight can produce substantial savings.

"This is a very sensitive issue, especially as fuel prices escalate," said aviation consultant Robert Mann.

American saved 111 million gallons of fuel in 2009 based on its Fuel Smart environmental program, which ranges from initiatives to shut off one engine while taxiing to stocking planes with lighter-weight beverage carts. American planes use about 2.7 billion gallons of fuel each year, Wagner said.

American has diverted flights to airports that were not the scheduled destination at a far higher rate than its network airline peers over the last two years, according to Bureau of Transportation Statistics data. In April, 0.32 percent of American flights were diverted, compared to 0.19 percent diverted at Delta Air Lines, 0.17 percent at Southwest Airlines and 0.14 percent at United.

"Does it raise the level of concern for the safety of the flight? It sure does," said John Plowman, president of Transport Workers Union Local 542, which represents American's flight dispatchers. With diversions, "the complexity of operations goes through the roof."

American officials said that a big reason for the higher diversion rate is that the airline's three busiest hub airports — Dallas/Ft. Worth, Chicago and Miami — are frequently socked by storms. Only 0.015 percent of American flights were diverted because of fuel-related issues, said Roberts, the airline's managing director of flight operations.

The most frequent cause of burning too much fuel is that the altitude called for in the flight plan was not followed, American officials said. Variances below optimum cruise altitude can increase fuel needs by up to 8 percent, they said.

As a result of the P-2 forms submitted by pilots requesting additional fuel, American officials discovered some increased fuel burn because of inefficient altitude assignments by FAA air traffic control that were different than planned, Wagner said. The pilot input also led to improved procedures to avoid turbulence, he said.

American says the union is overreacting, and some pilots appear to agree.

"The pilots union keeps preaching 'captain's authority,' but the company is padding more than the FAA minimums," said Dave Aldrich, a Boeing 767 pilot for American. "There are times when we are overfueled."

Since July 2008, American's dispatchers have been instructed to stick to fuel loads created by company analysts who crunched two years worth of flight data. Those who've consistently ordered more fuel have been subjected to "counseling."

"They've been bringing them in, in essence, to browbeat them," Plowman said. His union unsuccessfully protested the policy change, noting that counseling is the first step toward termination for a dispatcher.

An arbitrator ruled last year that "counseling" amounted to coaching and that discipline really begins when the company issues an advisory letter to a dispatcher. "As soon as we get one of those letters, we'll arbitrate the whole thing again."

Meanwhile, American's pilots union has advised its members to ignore management's recent directive, and union spokesman Tajer questions why it was made in the first place.

"We're literally on average talking 10 to 15 minutes of fuel," Tajer said. "It doesn't seem like much to us to ensure the higher success rate of actually reaching your destination if unanticipated delays occur. We see this as a rather absurd policy because it undermines the reliability of American's operation."

It is also a hot-button issue at other carriers with a history of pilot labor strife.

US Airways pilots put their concerns on display in 2008, after eight captains of wide-body aircraft, used on international flights, were assigned extra simulator training because they consistently requested more fuel than their peers.

The pilots were arriving with about 115 minutes of extra fuel, up from the 100 minutes averaged by other wide-body pilots, and almost double the FAA minimum load. Both the union and airline say they amicably settled the dispute. US Airways has since emphasized training over confrontation in dealing with fuel issues, said Ray, the union spokesman and US Airways pilot.

jhilkevitch@tribune.com

jjohnsson@tribune.com