H E A LT H A N D SA F E T Y Safety first a foundation for other gains When talking about safety, our mission statement includes physical and mental health, as well as flight By Captain Glen Morean, BALPA H&S Group F or many years, BALPAs mission statement was Making every flight a safe flight. We have since broadened our focus to include our members physical, mental and social wellbeing throughout their careers. Our goal is to reshape the profession to safeguard long-term health. For example, no pilot should have to reduce their working hours and consequently their pay simply to avoid unhealthy work patterns. This is relevant to most of our 10,000 professional pilots. This perspective reinforces the importance of aligning with traditional trade union priorities a commonality shared by UK groups such as the British Medical Association, the RMT and BALPA within the global movement. Making work safer must be every unions most urgent priority, as it is our most robust legal mandate. While improving terms and conditions remains crucial, such efforts are diminished if work leads to injury or illness, degrades longer-term health or shortens life expectancy. Additionally, we support members facing scrutiny, performance issues or workplace disputes, but should prevent, rather than merely mitigate, scenarios involving physical or psychological harm. Despite certain political narratives attempting to distract us with reductive stereotypes, our primary focus remains unchanged: protecting pilots health and ensuring their safety, both on the ground and in the air. This mission is just as important today as it was during aviations golden age, when risks were more overt. Regulatory shortfalls and operator responsibility Air operators and other stakeholders risk complacency when equating regulatory permission to operate with a strong safety culture or effective health and safety management. Aviation regulators, such as the UK CAA and the FAA, seek to guarantee flight safety through task-orientated compliance structures. However, these frameworks do not inherently foster a progressive or just safety culture, nor do they safeguard occupational health, which falls under separate agencies such as the HSE and HSENI (UK) or OSHA (USA). Less proactive safety systems exploit oversight gaps, such as in CAP 1484 (caa.co.uk/ publication/download/15940) creating vulnerabilities that impact aircrew as examples, below, highlight. Cockpit door surveillance systems (CDSS) In the UK, air operators sometimes misunderstand CAA certification as 26 THE LOG Spring 25 pp26-27 Health and Safety Report.indd 26 17/03/2025 14:19