corporate travel policies and flight safety

[Jim Mayer]

I work for a major humanitarian organization, and we have offices around the world, mostly in lesser-developed and least-developed countries.

In-country we have little choice about how we fly. I experienced this in parts of the former Soviet Union in the early 1990's after Aeroflot spun off its non-Russian operations. It was frightening enough that I wrote to our head of staff safety to register a complaint...

Sixteen years later, we're facing a different problem: for cost reasons, our Travel Office is pushing (even forcing) staff to take carriers from lesser-developed countries for long-haul flights. Some of these carriers may have just barely moved into the Skytrax 3-star category but, according to airdisaster.com, have hugely worse safety records than, for example, mainline European carriers like BA, LH, AF.

Do any of you work in an organization where your travel policies make reference to airline safety in choice of carrier? If so, how do you base your policies? What statistical sources do you use? Is there any resistance from your financial controllers to paying more for a "safer" airline? How do your staff react to choice of carrier?

Recent example: Geneva - Bangkok via Cairo with EgyptAir, vs Geneva - Bangkok via LHR with BA.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Jim in Geneva

[Uncle Jay]

I have to fly U. S. Airways. Talk about Third World.

[bleuair]

Hi Jim,

nice to see you still alive after those Aeroflot experiences ;)

for cost reasons, our Travel Office is pushing (even forcing) staff to take carriers from lesser-developed countries for long-haul flights.
Does your Travel Office also think about Opportunity Cost (e.g. less practical travel itineraries, loss of workforce due to a "more likely" incident when flying "carriers from lesser-developed countries")?
And: Which economical law tells them that these "carriers from lesser-developed countries" are always cheaper?

Perhaps you could tell a bit more about the example you made. Time, cost,...

Just remember the good old times where one simply didn't think of any other carrier than Swissair :smilewin:

[Jim Mayer]

In fact, opportunity cost is never factored in. This is a big difference between the private and public sector. If our opportunity cost is zero, we must therefore be worth zero....

Our organization's travel policy is "the most direct and economical routing" which in and of itself is fine with me.

But in the case I mentioned, GVA - CAI - BKK with EgyptAir, the total travel time was ca. 18 hours, including 4 hours connection in CAI from 0200 to 0600, no lounge. The cost was about 50% cheaper than GVA - LHR - BKK where the total travel time was closer to 14 hours, with less than 90 minutes at LHR.

(Also: EgyptAir is a dry airline. My religion requires me to have cocktails before dinner and wine with dinner, often followed by a "digestif".)

Based upon the stats in airdisaster.com, EgyptAir has an accident rate more than 20 times that of BA.

This is just the thin end of the wedge for those of us who travel long-haul frequently. Our travel office says "OK, they have Business Class, they're cheap, we're booking you." They don't have direct experience with actually flying with these carriers or making connections at their hubs. How they can compare EgyptAir's flying experience with any of the mainline European carriers (except Alitalia) escapes me.

We have been incredibly lucky that we have lost none of our staff in accidents on duty travel. But the most recent crash of the South Sudan Air Connection Beechcraft 1900 is indicative of the flights we *have* to take when we go to remote areas of operations. Why should we also take risks when we're flying long-haul? It just doesn't add up.

If any of you have corporate policies (beyond just a favoured carrier) that
explicitly address safety issues, they would be most welcome...

Regards,
Jim

[Quench]

Based upon the stats in airdisaster.com, EgyptAir has an accident rate more than 20 times that of BA.

Those statistics are irelevant for two reasons
1. Hijackings are not included, and the probability of being hijacked is not the same for all airlines.
2. And incident counts as "1" no matter how many passengers were killed.

To pick a good carrier you need to calculate the probability that you will die on the next flight. For that you need to compare number of passenger deaths per flight (or per million flights if you dont like small numbers)


(Also: EgyptAir is a dry airline. My religion requires me to have cocktails before dinner and wine with dinner, often followed by a "digestif".)

Yea well that is a far more serious problem, dieing in a crash is bad enough, dieing sober would realy suck :-)


We have been incredibly lucky that we have lost none of our staff in accidents on duty travel. But the most recent crash of the South Sudan Air Connection Beechcraft 1900 is indicative of the flights we *have* to take Jim

How many staff movements per year do you have ?
Egypt Air is 1 incident per 125,000 flights per year. So you would need to have 125,000 staff movements per year to have a 50% chance of having a member of staff in an incident in which a passenger dies (not necessararily the member of staff in question)

This may interest you
http://planecrashinfo.com/noaccident.htm

I would emphasise that some of these airlines have very few aircraft some maybe a disaster waiting to happen when the odds catch up with them. Some will be very safety concious of course.

My point is that you need to be VERY careful in evaluating statistics, and asking the right questions of them.

Stuart.

PS Egypt air seem to be improving, stats upto 2006 http://planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm