Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Cheap fares whether they are cheap airplane tickets or cheap vacation packages are great, but airline safety must always come first. In response to a fatal airline crash in western New York in early 2009, Congress is preparing tough new aviation safety measures.

A Continental commuter flight crashed near Buffalo-Niagara International Airport resulted in all 49 passengers aboard and one man in a house being killed. Pilot error and problems with pilot hiring and training by Colgan Air Inc., the regional airline that flew the flight for Continental Airlines, were cited by the National Transportation Safety Board. Its investigation revealed the accident was the unintended side-effect of the financially struggling airline industry that was reducing costs by turning short haul flights over to regional airlines.

Regional airlines frequently hire inexpensive pilots, give them grueling schedules and ignore when pilots have to spend hours commuting to airports because they are unable to afford to live in their base cities.

A glaring safety statistic is that each of the last six airline accidents in the United States involved regional airlines.

New safety measures in the bill include:

• Minimum flight experience for first officers be increased from 250 hours to 1,500 hours which is the same level as captains. This would result in regional airlines hiring more experienced pilots.

• The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) would have to revise rules regarding how many hours airlines can require a pilot to fly without rest.

• Airlines would have to create fatigue risk management plans, using scientific research on fatigue to evaluate pilot hours and bring attention to schedules that are likely to result in fatigue.

• Pre-employment screening of pilots

• Create mentoring programs for newly hired pilots to work with more experienced pilots

• Provide remedial training for pilots who have turned in poor skill tests results.
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