Survey Reveals Growing Concern : Airline Pilots Link Decline in Safety to Deregulation

Nearly two-thirds of commercial pilots surveyed believe air travel is more dangerous because of airline deregulation, a newspaper reported Sunday, and one pilot said the change “will be paid for in blood.”

The survey by the Dallas Times Herald revealed a growing concern among many pilots over almost every aspect of safety. Nearly half said that aircraft maintenance and the quality of new pilots have declined. A third said that the quality of air traffic control has worsened.

“It will take years and years for the safety problems caused by deregulation to become acute, and there will be better years and worse years,” said a co-pilot for a major airline. “But deregulation and cheap air fares will be paid for, and they will be paid for in blood.”

Wide-Ranging Survey

Eighty percent of those surveyed said that the crashes of 1985 have not affected their confidence in the safety of civil aviation, the newspaper reported. But pilots responding to the wide-ranging survey of 1,200 pilots were evenly divided on whether commercial passenger flight has become safer over the last five years.

A quarter of the pilots surveyed predicted that it will become more dangerous to fly over the next half-decade, with the most experienced pilots among the most pessimistic.

Only 1 in 70 saw increased safety resulting from deregulation, instituted by the federal government in 1978 to promote competition within the industry.

In written comments and in follow-up interviews to the mailed questionnaire, pilots stressed that flying is still the safest way to travel and that passengers need not fear for their lives when boarding an airplane. But most expressed concern about developing trends, the newspaper reported.

“It’s like there is this psychological air of impending doom over everyone (in the industry), a sword of Damocles,” said J. A. Williams, a captain for Piedmont Airlines.

W. H. Goltry, a captain for a major West Coast carrier, said: “I used to live to go to the airport and so did most of the pilots I know. But now, when I go out there, all I see is long faces. I think the pendulum is swinging in the wrong direction.”

“Deregulation has taken one of the best transportation systems in the world and virtually crippled it,” wrote a Mississippi-based pilot with more than 10 years’ experience.

“Although competition is a good thing, I think it has taken emphasis away from safety and efficiently moving passengers from one place to another and has wrongly placed the emphasis on making a buck,” the pilot said.

The pilots surveyed all fly for passenger airlines and hold airline transport certificates.