Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
SIR ROY
MCNULTY,
MR JOHN
ARSCOTT, MR
MICHAEL BELL
AND DR
HARRY BUSH
11 JANUARY 2006
Q60 Chairman: How often have you
done that in the last 10 years?
Mr Bell: I could not give you
the total but I could supply that information. On average it is
two per year.
Q61 Chairman: Are they big airlines?
Mr Bell: Some of them have significant
implications, yes. The number of options we have available to
us when dealing with an airline which is not performing is quite
varied. We can query the activity and the post holder could be
replaced and restrictions could be placed on their operation.
Chairman: Mr Bell, in the note you will
give me you are going to explain how often you have done that
in the last five years, not to be too cruel, and what types of
imposition has come from you to the companies concerned.
Q62 Mrs Ellman: Are you telling us
that safety standards will not be compromised?
Mr Bell: We have no intention
of compromising safety standards and we work to the best of our
ability to ensure that they are not compromised and I stand by
our record.
Sir Roy McNulty: Perhaps I might
add a comment on the British Airways case that you raised. I think
it is correct to say that we identified from our surveillance
of BA a number of matters of concern before even the first of
those incidents took place. We raised those with BA, I personally
met with Rod Eddington to explain our concerns and action has
been taken, which is very evident from their record in the last
12 to 18 months, and it has got a lot better. I do not like the
light touch" phrase. I think we have put heavy reliance on
the safety management systems that companies operate. We expect
them to have a good safety management system and we check that
they do and then we monitor how it is going. If we see that the
system is not working as intended or if we see drop-offs, we raise
that quite quickly from our surveillance, which we intend to keep.
It is not light touch withdrawing, hands off or whatever. We get
far more complaints from people that we are still too intrusive
than we do from people who say we are not doing enough.
Q63 Mrs Ellman: Has your work been
affected by the Better Regulation Commission?
Sir Roy McNulty: In some respects
it has and in other respects there is quite a lot still to come.
As you know, there are many initiatives that we are all going
to benefit from over the next year or so arising from the Hampton
Report, the Better Regulation Task Force and we are working together
with the Department for Transport on a number of aspects of that.
We had a major seminar with industry just before Christmas looking
for their ideas and we will address all the relevant aspects of
both of those reports. What we will try also to ensure is that
none of that cuts across the obligations that we have stemming
from ICAO or other requirements in due course from Europe or indeed
that it cuts across the statutory duties we have. We can always
improve. As I fully and freely admitted earlier, we are not perfect
and if better regulation can be applied in the CAA we will do
so.
Q64 Mrs Ellman: How many Regulatory
Impact Assessments have you produced?
Sir Roy McNulty: I would need
to research that but it is very many. It is our standard policy
when there is a change in regulation to do a Regulatory Impact
Assessment, but we can get a count down of that over the last
several years and supply that to the Committee.
Q65 Mrs Ellman: Are there any regulatory
policies of the CAA which have not been covered by a Regulatory
Impact Assessment?
Sir Roy McNulty: I would need
to research that. In the last three or four years it has been
our universal habit to do Regulatory Impact Assessments but there
are perhaps exceptions and one of those, for example, is economic
regulation, where the whole process of consultation, debate and
so on is so full that there is no need to do a special Regulatory
Impact Assessment. At the end of it all, everybody understands
perfectly well what is involved.
Q66 Mrs Ellman: What changes have
you made in response to the Hampton Report?
Sir Roy McNulty: As yet none,
but quite a number of the recommendations in the Hampton Report,
for example risk-based regulation, are things that we already
have in our policies and approach. As I said, in the last few
months we have begun to review that ourselves, we are discussing
it with the Department and I have no doubt that a full response
and a full action plan will result of things that are relevant
to us, but not all of it is.
Q67 Graham Stringer: Can I just have
one last bite at the BA cherry? What you seemed to be saying is
that there was a problem at BA, you took action and now everything
is as safe as it ever was at BA. You were also saying that there
was a period when these incidents that were reported in the newspapers
took place and passengers were at risk. What have you learned
and how you will improve the performance so that you intervene
before those passengers are at risk?
Sir Roy McNulty: What we and BA
learnt was that in the downsizing that they had to undertake post-
9/11, they perhaps went at it a bit too quickly and without adequate
attention to the supervision of certain maintenance tasks. I think
that is a lesson they have taken on board, it is a lesson we certainly
have taken on board, and we will watch very carefully any similar
situation in the future.
Q68 Graham Stringer: That is slightly
missing the point of my question.
Sir Roy McNulty: My apologies.
Q69 Graham Stringer: You are saying
that something went wrong, you understand that now and you will
keep an eye on it. What I am really trying to get at is how you
intervene earlier when something is going wrong. Passengers were
at risk because the intervention came later than it should have
done, were they not?
Sir Roy McNulty: I think the solution
lies in perhaps having got into earlier dialogue with BA about
exactly how they were going to implement the organisational changes
that they did. Having said that, it was not so much the changes
that they made that were wrong, it was in some aspects of the
implementation of it that things did not work out as planned.
Q70 Graham Stringer: Can you assure
us that the low cost carriers who have incredibly quick turnaround
times are not putting passengers at risk?
Sir Roy McNulty: We are certainly
satisfied with the safety regimes of the low cost carriers registered
in this country whom we supervise.
Q71 Chairman: That is not quite the
same thing, is it? That is a rather careful use of the English
language. You are saying you are satisfied with the safety regulations
which the ones that are based in this country have put in place.
Do you have any way of checking their safety regulations if they
are based somewhere else, like in Ireland or Latvia?
Sir Roy McNulty: The only way
we have of checking is from the Safety of Foreign Aircraft process
or from incidents that happen within this country, but we have
limited reach in relation to airlines registered elsewhere. To
come back to Mr Stringer's question, the safety surveillance that
we exercise is exactly the same for low cost airlines as it is
for traditional airlines. Our experience has been that the low
cost airlines take safety very seriously and they take maintenance
very seriously because if you are going to achieve the aircraft
utilisation that they aim for and the turnarounds that they aim
for then the last thing you need is a maintenance problem getting
in your way.
Q72 Graham Stringer: When we visited
your headquarters before Christmas we had a discussion about the
impact of the European air safety organisation and I want to paraphrase
the discussion. It was that while southern states and new states
within the European Union are being brought up to standard no
improvements are taking place and many of the improvements you
might wish to see or we might wish to see have not taken place.
Is that the case, Sir Roy?
Sir Roy McNulty: I think it is
the case, as we mentioned in our memorandum to the Committee,
that EASA is experiencing significant difficulties in getting
itself set up and operating in a satisfactory way for a range
of reasons and some may be to do with organisational difficulties,
some may be to do with staffing difficulties and some may be to
do with management or planning difficulties, I do not know, we
are not inside the organisation. I think so far we are a bit disappointed
with the way it has got going.
Q73 Graham Stringer: So it is slowing
down the improvement of safety regulations.
Sir Roy McNulty: For example,
the JAA had a rule making programme aimed at keeping up with safety
issues in the industry and technology issues, and that rule making
programme has certainly slowed down. I do not think, at the moment,
safety rule making and safety standards setting is getting as
much attention as it was, and we do not think that is a good situation.
Q74 Graham Stringer: In some of the
written evidence that has been presented to the Committee you
are accused of being slow to embrace new technologies such as
LED, by which I assume they mean light emitting dials although
they do not say that. It is claimed that that is better for airfield
lighting than current technologies. You are accused of being slow
to change the regulations applying to the heights of buildings
around airports, you are accused of applying rules that applied
to aeroplanes that operated just after the Second World War, and
you are also accused of not giving as much support to airports
when they are developing new technologies as was the case in the
past. Would you care to comment on those criticisms?
Sir Roy McNulty: I will ask Mike
Bell to comment on the specifics. I think it is probably true
that we are cautious. That is not an entirely undesirable characteristic
for a safety regulator but, more importantly, most of the things
that you refer to relate to safety standards which are international
standards. Quite a number of the standards that we aim to see
in place in this country stem from ICAO and ICAO moves quite slowly.
We are now in a situation where rule making and standards setting
for aviation is handled by EASA on a pan-European basis and so
it will not move very fast. We have little freedom of manoeuvre
in the areas you have described, but I will ask Mike Bell to comment
on the specifics.
Mr Bell: In relation to the embracing
of new technologies, I just did not know where that was coming
from. We have embraced new technologies in the CAA at a pace driven
largely by manufacturers from 1988, for example, when the Airbus
fly-by-wire aircraft was first introduced. When the cathode tube
technology came in at the same time we embraced that and when
that changed to the LCD screens which are currently fitted to
the triple seven we embraced that as well. I do not really recognise
that. If there is an issue concerning airports, I will find out
about that and answer it. As regards the height of buildings,
our only input into that is as part of the airspace implications
if it infringes a safety surface and there is a planning application
where an airport has objected to the height of a building, for
example, that is planned to be built near to it, which is quite
relevant in this area, and it has an implication on the traffic
patterns and the safety of aircraft flying into other airports
or the airport itself.
Q75 Graham Stringer: You wrote an
excellent report on allowing regional airports to have freedoms
for airlines landing there. The Government adopted that policy
in late September, early October of last year and I think Ministers
are keen, you are obviously keen and regional airports are keen,
but I am less sure that officials at the Department for Transport
are keen. Would you monitor the implementation of that policy,
is that part of your role and part of your advice to Government?
Dr Bush: As you know, we published
a report on regional airports overall last February, so we see
this as an important part of the information base that the CAA
should be maintaining, and I would anticipate that in a year or
two we will be looking at how the fifth freedom change that you
are talking about had been implemented and what issues might have
arisen in the meantime.
Q76 Mr Scott: Sir Roy, I want to
go back to what you were saying about some of the budget price
carriers. If a carrier is not registered in this country but is
predominantly using our airports for flying to other European
destinations, do you believe it may be helpful if they came under
the same jurisdiction as carriers who are registered in this country?
Sir Roy McNulty: I think that
is arguable, but certainly the system that is set up is based
on the state of registry so that for all airlines and aircraft
that are registered in the UK, we follow their safety affairs
no matter where they fly in the world and, similarly, aircraft
flying in here from other jurisdictions are registered and supervised
by the regulatory authorities in those countries. You would need
to pull the whole thing up by the roots and approach it in a different
way if you wished to follow the line of thought that you have
suggested, but the difficulty is that aircraft are very movable
things and you would have a very difficult job of trying to regulate
every aircraft that flies in and out of this country.
Q77 Mr Scott: I was not actually
referring to every aircraft that flies in and out of this country,
but there are certain carriers who predominantly may be registered
abroad, but they are using British airports the whole time to
fly their customers and surely they should come under your jurisdiction.
Sir Roy McNulty: Well, as I say,
if the—
Q78 Chairman: Sir Roy, can I just
stop you there. This point has concerned, as you know, this Committee
before and you do have the power, do you not, to do airport checks?
Sir Roy McNulty: Absolutely and
we do random checks, as we call them, on specific aircraft, picked,
I was going to say at random", but actually it is not at
random and I think it is quite carefully targeted on where we
think there might be issues and we can carry out those checks
if we have concerns.
Q79 Mr Goodwill: Yes, that was the
point I wanted to develop because it is apparent that every new
former Soviet Republic has got its own airline and many people
are concerned about the resources available to those airlines
to maintain high safety standards. As I take it from your previous
answer, it is slightly more than a tyre-kicking exercise, but
there is very limited time in which you can inspect these aircraft
when they are on the ground. Is that true?
Sir Roy McNulty: That is true.
Can I ask Mr Bell to expand a little bit on what we do?
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