The Countess of Mar asked Her Majesty's Government: Whether they have evidence that contaminated air events are under-reported by airline crews, as previously indicated by a British Airline Pilots Association's survey of pilots in 2002; and, if so, what steps they are taking to address this issue. [HL1779]

Lord Davies of Oldham: The Air Navigation (General) Regulations 1993 prescribe the mandatory reporting to the Civil Aviation Authority of any hazardous, or potentially hazardous, defects encountered during aircraft operations or maintenance. Specifically article 17(c) requires the reporting of any occurrence involving the impairment during a flight of the capacity of a member of the flight crew to properly undertake his or her functions. That fact that the CAA receives over a thousand mandatory occurrence reports from aircrew each year demonstrates that they understand the need for occurrence reporting and the nature of mandatory reports. The CAA is not aware of any under reporting of oil fume exposures by aircrew. Indeed since all UK aircrew take aviation safety very seriously, there is no reason to believe that they would deliberately under report occurrences involving impairment.

October 2005