Here’s what we did at the May 2009 conference.
The First FRMS Form meeting was held at the offices of QinetiQ in Farnborough, England, on 6th May 2009.
The purpose was to explain to the audience of some 53 delegates, that a committee comprising Captain Simon Stewart (easyJet), Captain Rob Holiday (Virgin Atlantic), Captain Jim Mangie (Delta Airlines), Dr David Powell (Air New Zealand), Dr Barbara Stone (QinetiQ) and Douglas Mellor (QinetiQ) were proposing to create a platform whereby those who had experience of FRMS could present their insights to all who were interested in learning how to go about it.
Ms Kathryn Jones of UK CAA offered to assist by being an observer.
David Learmount (Flight International’s editor) chaired the event and opened with a presentation on his insights on the risks of fatigue within the aviation industry.
Presentations were received from Capt. Simon Stewart, Dr Karen Robertson (QinetiQ), Malcolm Christie (CASA, Australia) and Dr David Powell. EASA was represented by Ms Kathryn Jones who explained the EASA position on FRMS.
Douglas Mellor led a discussion on the value of creating a forum for this purpose and outlined some draft operating principles and thought on how it all could work. The delegate unanimously agreed that this vehicle would be useful and commended the team to create it. Each of the founders was elected to serve on the committee and an agreement was reached to after the meeting to set the joining fee at £250 per organisation. All member organisations would be free to send an unrestricted number of delegates to future forum conferences.
The committee was authorised by the delegates to raise funds through membership fees in order to create the necessary website independently of any other organisation.