I was unaware that my blog was so popular at Transport Canada. First off, let me say thank you to those at Transport Canada that viewed it however, I'm guessing they did not view it for fun because in my 2 recent posts about the agency, I summarized the allegations about safety and inspection deficiencies that supposedly have occurred over the last several years. As was brilliantly pointed out by the season premier of CBC's The Fifth Estate, an investigative journalism program for those that don't know, surprise inspections are rarely carried out on commercial jets anymore. Such inspections are now handled by the Safety Management System which is a safety and quality assurance plan managed by individual airlines. The airlines must still follow all Transport Canada regulations within the plan and file all reports with the agency. Inspections are still carried out by T.C. but only if they detect a problem with the safety or operations management.
Another issue pointed out by The Fifth Estate was that when airports get extremely busy, sometimes security is put at risk as security screeners are pressured to not cause delays over security concerns or regulations. A great example of that is a case that happened recently where a passenger on an Air Canada flight did not want to pay an overweight bag fee and was going to cause a scene. One of the security agents calmed the situation by agreeing to take the passenger's bag and put it on the flight ... no extra charges and no security screening was done. Lucky nothing was wrong with that bag. I should point out that what the security agent did was extremely illegal and violates safety regulations. Transport Canada should have been informed about the incident but weren't.
All of the above statements I have just made can be found in The Fifth Estate program titled Riding on Risk. I wonder if this is going to make me more popular at Transport Canada. Google Analytics is such a nice tool.
Thank you to my fans. Safe blue skies everyone.
