The concern related to the availability of food to the flight crew during flight time.
The reporter expressed a safety concern relating to the food provision supplied to pilots on domestic and international flights.
The reporter advised that the operator no longer supplies food to pilots on the flight deck. This has often resulted in no adequate sustenance being made available to flight crew if circumstances change, such as prolonged delays or due to time requirements, meaning they are not able to purchase food at the terminal, or they have their meals confiscated. Due to the liquid, aerosol and gels (LAGS) regulations, pilots have had their homemade meals confiscated when passing through customs on international sectors.
To date, there are no meals and often no snacks available on-board for them to purchase as the food is sold out which results in the flight crew being the only people on board with no access to food for the flight.
The reporter also advised that they do not always have facilities on board to cool their prepared food adequately which leads to an unacceptable risk of food poisoning for flight crew.
We recently negotiated a new agreement with the Pilot group replacing on-board meals with a meal allowance.
As part of this change, procedures were put in place to ensure that there will always be adequate sustenance available to pilots from on-board products available to crew and passengers. In addition, additional cold storage space has been provided to facilitate pilots’ provision of their own meals.
To date we have not had any significant issues reported by pilots or cabin crew but will be conducting a Post Implementation Review on [date] to identify and rectify any significant issues.
ATSB comment:
The ATSB clarified with the reporter whether they were aware of the new agreement and whether they had been asked for a comment for the review.
The reporter advised they had not been made aware of the review. There are concerns regarding the logistical aspects of not having any meals available on-board, as our operation doesn't just include return sectors to our home base and it's not uncommon to have minimum rest out of base where there is no time to go and buy or prepare food.
The agreement whereby meals were replaced with an allowance included the company ensuring that we have access to adequate sustenance (i.e. meals at least being available for purchase on-board) however, there has been no provision of meals to purchase and no discounting added to the point of sale system to allow the purchase of discounted snacks, yet the meals that were being provided previously have been removed for pilots and are now only supplied to cabin crew.
There are also no procedures in place yet for safely storing our food, so if you are doing a 10 hour duty with dinner towards the end of it, your meal has been sitting without proper refrigeration the whole time which obviously greatly increases the chances of food poisoning for the operating crew.
Operators response:
A post implementation review of arrangements will see the addition of a process whereby crew can pre-purchase crew meals for flights where it is difficult to make other arrangements.
Review of supplies available on-board has been conducted and indicates that there have not been any flights where there was no product available from the cart on board. The process for flight crew is for the cabin crew to be advised at the beginning of the sector as to the crew requirements so that the required items can be put aside.
Appropriate storage capacity is available on all flights.
CASA has reviewed the REPCON and is satisfied with the operator’s response in terms of the impacts on aviation safety. CASA will continue to monitor the operator’s review through routine surveillance.