FOQA | Abandoning the industry standard

A pivotal component of a safety infrastructure, the Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) Program analyzes de-identified data taken from flight data recorders to enhance pilot training, operating procedures, aircraft maintenance and other safety-focused systems. A tri-partite, FAA-authorized program, FOQA is the industry standard, bringing together the Administration, the pilot group and the carrier. The initiative requires management and union representatives to work together in the spirit of cooperation and confidentiality to evaluate and to address – outside of any disciplinary channels – aircraft and pilot performance for the specific purpose of facilitating continuous operational improvements.

Pilot group voices growing alarm as safety culture, practices change at the Fractional

NetJets has abandoned a highly effective, FAA-approved program that has positioned the Fractional provider and its pilot group to work in partnership to identify and mitigate safety concerns for more than a decade. Rather than address concerns voiced by NJASAP about a potential program data breach, NetJets instead chose to unilaterally terminate the industry-standard safety initiative this past July. 

In March 2024, NJASAP learned of a serious breach in FOQA protocol: Secure pilot reporting data, which must remain confidential, was made susceptible to breach by an outside contractor. Union Safety Committee leaders immediately advised NetJets’ Vice President of Safety Eric McCarty of the breach, expecting that he would share the Union’s concern and take immediate corrective action. That was not the case. When the same problem reoccurred two months later, NJASAP reiterated its concerns and chose to suspend the FOQA Program in accordance with the initiative’s governing documents. 

The suspension would give management time to correct the problems, or, at the very least, to address the Union’s concerns, which were detailed in a late-May letter to McCarty. Once again, this did not happen: NetJets executives refused the Union’s every outreach to remedy and to restore the program, going so far as to refuse NJASAP’s early-July offer to lift the suspension if corporate safety officials addressed the three most pressing violations cited in the May letter. Rather than address these concerns, McCarty responded that management would proceed with the termination of the FOQA Program; click here to review the timeline. 

Throughout the past 10 months, it has become apparent that this decision was part of a broader and, frankly, confounding agenda of diminishing the role of professional pilots in identifying and mitigating risks to operational safety. To carry out this marginalization, NetJets has sought FAA approval for a replacement FOQA Program that neither meets key safety standards nor involves the pilot group as a direct participant. Instead, the pilots have been relegated to what NetJets calls an “external stakeholder.” As the trained professionals who pilot NetJets aircraft day in and day out, the choice of terminology is a red flag that has exacerbated our growing alarm.

NJASAP has urged the Administration to refrain from approving NetJets’ FOQA Program proposal absent the formal involvement of the men and women – the pilot professionals – who fly their aircraft. Moreover, the Union has communicated its concerns to Berkshire Hathaway Chair Warren Buffett.