Senator DiMwit

Senator Jim DeMint has introduced legislation (S.3048) to monitor cockpit voice & data recorders for the explicit purpose of reviewing pilot performance; including discipline & termination.

The data recorders (a.k.a. the black boxes) were introduced many years ago to help analysis in serious incidents & accidents where NTSB investigators and/or the FAA get involved; to see what the actual conditions the pilots were facing and their response to those conditions. It is a safety tool utilized after the fact.

Currently the FAA prohibits pilots from non-safety related conversations below 10,000' (known as the sterile cockpit rule) to lessen the chance of unnecessary distractions & focus on the tasks at hand related to takeoff & landing, our busiest time during a flight.

This legislation, which is extremely obscure and purposefully anti-labor, gives management unfettered access to comments & conversations held in private at any time during the flight. It opens a very slippery slope that allows the interpretation of several subjective definitions up to each individual airline, including "endanger the...well being of passengers", "monitor the judgement", or the catch all "for any other purpose...". It doesn't mention if conversations would be randomly monitored or could be targeted against particular individual pilots; again intentionally vague.

With not even a press release or Op Ed piece or mention on his blog explaining the need for this legislation - I doubt Senator DeMint has much invested in this bill. I would be very surprised that the ATA (the airlines collective trade group) would offer any support for this; most certainly the various pilot unions (including ALPA, SWAPA, & CAPA and others) are all against it. So far this has no Senate co-sponsors - gee I wonder why? Though maybe he'd love to hear all the spirited talk about it on the CVR's.

If this does somehow pass and become law - I would pity the poor individuals tasked with listening to the typical blather involved on the thousands of daily flights, trying to sort it all into the various bias buckets for further review. I would predict a very high turnover rate for that job; especially if they followed any overheard investment advice.