Statement of Jeffrey Bayless, United Airlines

MR. BAYLESS: Thank you for that kind introduction. Just so I don't misrepresent myself, I wasn't a framer, I was just one of the ALPA representatives on the set-up of the FOQA Program.

My name is Jeff Bayless. Some of you may look in your agenda and see that Ed Soliday is supposed to be speaking right now, and I'm not Ed Soliday. He asked me to speak for him late yesterday afternoon, and, so, I have his slides, and I'm going to do the best that I can.

I'm going to talk to you about the FOQA Program. In general terms, it is of critical importance to ensure the flow of safety-related information to flight operations, engineering and back to the pilot group.

Detailed analysis of FOQA data has immense value in identifying the soft spots in our daily operation that may lead to an incident if uncorrected.

FOQA data is an additional feedback tool regarding compliance with established operating procedures, such as stabilized approaches, taxi speeds, and ground proximity warning system activation.

On the engineering side, we receive valuable information regarding aircraft systems performance. Now, some of that sounds familiar because you've just heard it from our friends from British Airways this morning, but that's the good thing about the safety business, we plagiarize, and it's accepted.

United established a steering committee of ALPA and company representatives to develop the framework and timetable for the program development. This core group received the language written into other carriers' letters of agreement. Of particular interest was the LOA of mature programs, such as British Airways.

Following a thorough review of existing programs, the steering committee drafted a hybrid document that met United's specific program objectives.

United was the first U.S. carrier to sign a FOQA agreement with the Airline Pilots Association. This would not have been possible without the FAA's guarantee of immunity.

Of extreme importance was the development of a trusting relationship between the pilot group and the company. This was primarily achieved through joint development of the letter of agreement and the program elements creating a true team effort in every sense of the word.

The letter of agreement established a provision for the technical team, the exceedance guidance team, each with specific responsibilities. These teams are responsible for developing the day-to-day procedures used in managing the program. The steering committee subsequently initiated action to fill ALPA and company positions on these terms.

The technical team's first goal was to define specific procedures to manage data and to define exceedance parameters. Since these exceedance parameters include events applicable to both flight operations and engineering, the team included experienced pilots and recognized engineering experts.

The exceedance guidance team's primary responsibility is to review significant safety issues identified during routine data analysis. This team is comprised of several ALPA captains respected for both their extensive experience and superb flying skills. In essence, they are respected and trusted by their peers. Exceedance guidance team members are the only ones at United that can identify the data.

Ed Soliday, myself, none of us have the password capability to drill down into the data to actually find the flight number and the day date to identify the crew. So, it's only our ALPA pilots that contact the crewmembers.

The Airbus A-320 was the first aircraft we used to establish our FOQA Program, and the reason is the A-320 is equipped with a quick-access recorder, providing tremendous flexibility in identifying and recording a broad array of operational maintenance parameters.

All of United's A-320s are equipped with the optical QAR. Our Airbus aircraft are based on the West Coast, the East Coast and centrally located in Chicago, thus providing information regarding operations to most domestic airports.

Initially, we started flying the Airbus into Orange County, LaGuardia, Washington National and had plenty of opportunity for some exciting approaches to analyze the data.

The aircraft were delivered with a state-of-the-art flight data acquisition capability or the recording map that permitted the operator selection of desired recorded parameters.

The technical team members drafted a set of performance parameters that reflected United's aircraft operating procedures. United established three levels of exceedances as FOQA parameters. Level 1 is informational exceedances, primarily indicators of performance in a normal phase of flight.

Operational issues surfaced during data analysis may be addressed in transition training or during annual recurrent training, and in many cases, the pilot group can be easily made aware of growing concerns through existing training material.

Flight crewmembers are guaranteed anonymity which again is a critical element of an effective program.

Level 2 exceedances are alerts that are significant deviations from standard operating procedures. Level 2 events are reviewed more carefully to ensure understanding as to why the event occurred. Corrective measures are jointly developed by individual fleets and ALPA representatives. Once again, flight crew anonymity is guaranteed.

Level 3 is a safety exceedance. They are major deviations from expected operating procedures. Level 3 events are incidents that have the potential to result in aircraft damage, such as a tail strike on take-off or a failure of an engine reverser to operate normally. An Engineering Level 3 may include information regarding an engine performance or component reliability.

Once the Level 3 event is identified during initial analysis, a diskette containing the data is provided to the exceedance guidance team member for review. Only the ALPA exceedance guidance team has the ability to identify and contact the crewmembers.

The exceedance guidance team has several options following an event. They can verbally discuss the event with the crew or they may reject a momentary glitch as a safety issue. Another example would be a side step to an ILS where they got a glide scope exceedance, which may be rejected as a false warning.

They can also recommend de-identified training. We have the ability to send our crews out to Denver, which is our training base. They can spend a couple hours in the simulator for some additional training which is totally de-identified and never shows up in the pilot's record.

Just a bit of a history on our FOQA Program: United selected two companies, Teledyne and the Flight Data Company, to provide FOQA hardware and software for the United evaluation. Initial vendor support included systems set-up in our San Francisco Flight Safety Office and appropriate training on the system operation.

We envisioned United FOQA Program to evolve continuously with system modifications or enhancements to meet future needs.

The FOQA support equipment must be reliable, process data expeditiously, operate with minimal manpower, and be easily reprogrammed should exceedance parameters be revised.

Vendors programmed the ground system with United-developed parameters. Parameters and system operation was validated from July to December of 1995. Over 3,600 flights, with over 9,400 flight hours, were accumulated during the six-month test program. Typically, the QAR diskette is removed by maintenance every two to three days and provided to the Flight Safety for analysis.

United conducted a steering committee trial review of data collected during the test period in January of 1996. United and ALPA jointly provided the pilot group with the details about gathering and handling of information gleaned from the QAR data analysis. The acceptance of the program was very favorable. FOQA has been an established program at United since July of 1995.

Lessons learned. Early in the development process, we recognized the potential of using the FOQA Program for incident discovery rather than as a useful tool for performance and trend analysis.

Level 1 and 2 events are useful indicators of areas that require additional training emphasis. It is easy to get trapped into focusing on Level 3 events as a sole indicator of our operational integrity.

In retrospect, the technical team needed stronger engineering representatives to develop more parameters that would meet engineering's need for information regarding the fleet health. At present, Flight Operations is making greater use of FOQA data than our engineering counterparts.

Initial parameter definitions reflected the high standards of our pilot group but were perhaps a bit too idealistic. In some respects, several parameters have been relaxed to avoid nuisance exceedances. Vendor selection required much more time than originally expected. It took several months to learn how to operate two different data management systems and to test them in an operational environment.

This problem is further exacerbated by vendor reluctance to spend great sums of money prior to signing a contract.

Future implementation strategies. We're working with NASA and the APMS Development Program, the University of Dayton's Flight Project, and the UTRS Program.

Our engineering department's interest in FOQA data is blossoming, and we're working closely with them on future developments. Finally, United selected and purchased video simulation replay units to prepare visual presentations of significant events. We have the ability to create a FOQA event of the month. These videos are used for event analysis and flight crew training.

That's all I have. Thank you very much for your attention.