June 9, 2009
Airlines Hiring "Very Substandard" Pilots
Flight 1549 Co-Pilot Says Industry Forced To Accept Minimum FAA Qualification Levels
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Play CBS Video Video Safety Reality Of Flying Debris from the Air France crash site offers clues, reports Nancy Cordes. Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger's co-pilot, Jeff Skiles, speaks to Maggie Rodriguez on the safety of planes and pilots.
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Video Pilot Training In Question As the NTSB examines the experience of the pilot who commanded doomed Flight 3407, focus has also been placed on the current training guidelines for commercial airline pilots. Ben Tracy reports.
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Video Colgan Buffalo Crash Detailed The NTSB will focus on pilot training for regional jets after the deadly Buffalo, N.Y. crash earlier this year, reports Nancy Cordes. Julie Chen speaks to former FAA official Michael Goldfarb.
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In the wake of criticism about the experience and training of pilots, U.S. officials said they plan to increase inspection of pilot training programs at regional airlines. (Bombardier)
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Interactive Industry Turbulence See how the country's top airlines are faring
The comments come on the heels of National Transportation Safety Board testimony last month which revealed that a series of critical errors by the captain and co-pilot preceded the crash of the twin engine turboprop on February 12, killing 50 people.
Critics are focusing their attention on pilot training and working conditions.
In a review of NTSB accident records, USA Today yesterday revealed that in most serious accidents over the past decade, pilots who had a history of failing skills and performance tests were at the controls.
Most of these accidents involved smaller regional airlines, which account for roughly half of all domestic flights.
"Well, the general pilot qualification level is certainly a concern for us in the industry right now," First Officer Jeff Skiles told Early Show anchor Maggie Rodriguez. "We've never really had to be hiring entry level pilots at the FAA minimums before.
"In the past it's been a very attractive career for people to join, and the airlines, even the regional airlines, have been able to select from a very qualified applicant pool. That's not happening any more, and we're having to hire down to the FAA minimums, which most pilots have always considered to be very substandard."
Skiles also confirmed the complaints of other pilots about working conditions. Many are forced to work grueling schedules with little sleep between shifts and low pay. Testimony at last month's NTSB hearing into the Buffalo crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 revealed that pilots can work as long as 16 hours straight, with as little as 4 or 5 hours of sleep, before getting back into the cockpit.
"That is true," Skiles said. "The current fatigue rest rules are less restrictive than truck drivers work under. Once you've been on duty for 13 hours, you are about 500 percent more likely to make an error, and once you've been on duty for 16 hours, you have the response rate of somebody who is legally drunk.
"This is a concern for all of us," he said, "and what we're trying to do is have Congress actually propose legislation to lower the flight duty regulations that we work under."
Skiles said that most pilots in the regional carrier industry are "very experienced and very qualified," but that having a skilled operator in the pilot's seat is on a case-by-case basis.
"There are cracks in the system," he told Rodriguez.
Testimony at the NTSB hearing on the crash indicated the flight's captain may not have had hands-on training on a critical cockpit safety system. The cockpit voice recorder showed the co-pilot describing her lack of experience flying in icy weather not long before the crash.
At a House hearing in February, Skiles noted that when he began at US Air, the company required several thousand hours of flying time just to gain an interview for a pilot job. "New pilots in the jet aircraft of our affiliate airlines have 300 hours," he said. "It is certainly in the interest of the traveling public to have experienced crews in the cockpit."
Skiles says that the FAA needs to raise the minimum requirements to what he calls "real world levels."
Skiles also testified that, because of the economic turmoil facing the airline industry over the last several years has hit pilots hard. his salary has been reduced in half, and he's lost his pension.
"Many pilots like Captain Sullenberger and myself have had to split their focus from the airline piloting profession and develop alternative businesses or careers," Skiles said. "I myself am a general contractor. For the last 6 years, I have worked 7 days a week between my two jobs just to maintain a middle class standard of living."
The result, Skiles testified, is that experienced pilots are leaving the industry for other, more lucrative career fields, and are being replaced with inexperienced pilots.
In response to the outcry about pilot qualifications, U.S. officials have said they plan to increase inspection of pilot training programs at regional airlines.
In a statement Tuesday Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Federal Aviation Administrator Randy Babbitt said they will also hold a summit meeting with the airline industry next week to seek better pilot training and other safety improvements.
Babbitt said it was clear from the crash of a regional airliner near Buffalo, New York, in February that safety needs to be improved.
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- Can't help but put the cynicism in. The new carrier pilots transport working people. The private jets transport the important people, like politicians and CEO's. Just who do you think is getting the best pilots? The fodder is expendable.
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- One of the conditions of NAFTA and theWTO was for 'international wage standards' for labor as the GOAL!
Google: 'airline pilots earn less then truck drivers and garbage truck operators'
And it doesn't matter if you fly a plane in the U.S. or Zimbabwe.
Thanks Reagan...for busting up unions...you were a good soldier for the globalists.
Posted by whitemale08
No, no, no- go to a website called "willflyforfood.com"- they list pilot pay scales from a multitude of airlines. Just one example: Working for American Airlines, the FIRST YEAR, a pilot earns $35.00/hour, with a guarantee of 64 hours a month, and after 12 years, earns anywhere from $157.00 to $199.00 per HOUR, depending on which aircraft they're flying. With the 64 hours per month guarantee, that's $10,048.00 to $12,736.00 PER MONTH. Show me a truck driver or garbage truck driver that makes that kind of money, especially for working 64 hours per month. Ain't happenin, dude! - Reply to this comment
- When I recently applied for a pilot's job, the interviewer told me that if I could drive a bicycle they could train me to be a pilot in 2 weeks. I was rejected because I never learned to drive a bicycle.
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- Aptitude, Training, Experience?.. in that order.
All three are needed to be a SAFE, SEASONED, pilot. Sadly the tragedy of 3407 will be repeated because in the aviation world the aptitude of the individual is not evaluated. Experience (according to Roger Cohen) does not matter.
Civilian pilot training focuses all its efforts in training. When an accident occurs?. more training. No one ever stops to ask: ?Should this individual be flying a commercial airliner? Does this person have enough experience?? The answer is always, fix the training. Add more training.
News flash: The training is fine. It doesn?t need to be fixed. The pilots need to be evaluated for aptitude and experience level. Clear now? - Reply to this comment
- One of the conditions of NAFTA and theWTO was for 'international wage standards' for labor as the GOAL!
Google: 'airline pilots earn less then truck drivers and garbage truck operators'
And it doesn't matter if you fly a plane in the U.S. or Zimbabwe.
Thanks Reagan...for busting up unions...you were a good soldier for the globalists. - Reply to this comment
- Airlines may be hiring pilots that meet the minimum qualifications but something that needs to be considered is that these pilots *do* meet the requirements. If it's determined that the minimum isn't good enough then that's the FAA's fault for setting low requirements, not the airlines' fault for hiring pilots that have passed set requirements.
Posted by griking at 4:41 PM : Jun 9, 2009
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What the FAA says is irrelevant. The airlines use it as their personal CYA. We've had numerous examples of FAA failures to initiate regulations that are always a day late and a dollar short. They are political puppets for elite and the airline industry, not for flyers and consumers. - Reply to this comment
- While CEOs and Wall street hucksters are receiving enormous compensation for criminal acts, those who actually have highly responsible and technical jobs that affect people's lives such as airline pilots are being squeezed down to sweat shop labor.
This club of overly rich often NYC Wall streeters have been stripping away the economy of the USA so they can have more money than anyone ever needs. It is now time to bring out and sharpen the guillotines before it is too late. - Reply to this comment
- It's the greed factor at work. What's with the airline pilots association I thought they were all about safety and professionalism. Haven't heared a peep out of them about unsafe working hours for pilots, of course they told their pilots to fly when Regan fired the air traffick controllers even though it wasn't safe. And of course the government doesn't want to get the airlines mad.
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- 31 years have past
Is this this same World ?
Folks! The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was introduced by Sen. Howard Cannon, a Democrat from Nevada and signed into law by Democratic president Jimmy Carter!!! Blame the GOP all you want for other ills, this was a Democrat controlled Congress with a Democrat president who appointed Alfred Kahn as Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board in order to bring deregulation to the airline industry.
Since 1980,...Bill Clinton was the Only Demo President until Now
Let`s set the record Straight
Rather than Skew the facts,.. - Reply to this comment
- Airlines may be hiring pilots that meet the minimum qualifications but something that needs to be considered is that these pilots *do* meet the requirements. If it's determined that the minimum isn't good enough then that's the FAA's fault for setting low requirements, not the airlines' fault for hiring pilots that have passed set requirements.
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- Again we see the insanity of neglecting our human capital, at our own collective peril. One airline manager recently wrote that "onerous" working conditions for new pilots in the airline industry were no different than in other industries. Excuse me, there is a difference -- the pilot is reponsible for my life as a passenger! The worst part is that safety violations, and their consequences, are well known and documented. Where is the tort liability for those who knowingly allow such conditions to persist?
How can we accept competition in the airline industry resulting in the elimination of adequate training and safe employment conditions for pilots? This proves that we need an external control mechanism to prevent airlines from reducing prices below a certain level. It proves that free-market competition also has an ugly, destructive and uncontrollable aspect. These problems will never be solved without global industry re-regulation. Otherwise we pay the price with our lives, safety and destruction of our infrastructure. I mean, we are essentially accepting 9/11 type events may occur under present market conditions. How insane is that? - Reply to this comment
- Folks! The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was introduced by Sen. Howard Cannon, a Democrat from Nevada and signed into law by Democratic president Jimmy Carter!!! Blame the GOP all you want for other ills, this was a Democrat controlled Congress with a Democrat president who appointed Alfred Kahn as Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board in order to bring deregulation to the airline industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act - Reply to this comment
- As long as commuter airlines hire new pilots at $21,000-26,000 they won't anything but unqualified pilots
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- Recalling the January 7, 1948 incident of Kentucky Air National Guard Captain Thomas Mantell, Jr., who was ordered to intercept a UFO sited over Mansville, Kentucky, one notices a strange similarity in eyewitness testimony. Witness farmer Glen Mays of Franklin, KY said he saw Mantell's plane "enveloped by a brilliant white flash of light...so bright....it was like looking at the sun". Captain Mantell's aircraft then "appeared to fall out of this light and pancake into the ground" Mays said.
There's a commonality between the Air France Flight 447 tragedy and Captain Mantell's crash---- reports of a mysterious intense flash of white light preceding the doomed aircraft. Just coincidence?... or something more frightening?
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Posted by craigbennie
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Doubt if aliens involved. Maybe a bomb planted by terrorist. If so, the governments involved will try to keep it quiet, like they did with the TWA crash off of Long Island. - Reply to this comment
- This has been going on since the Reagan era. Reagonics, the "trickle down" theory doesn't work! Less pay for those who provide the real service or product, the nurses, the doctors, the lab techs, the pilots, etc. and more and more and yet more to the gluttonous upper echelon who contribute so little to the actual needs.
De-regulation? Remember the Savings & Loans scandals and melt down? We learned nothing! And the end result? Today's financial markets melt down. Commercial airlines for years could count on experienced, ex-military pilots hiring on. Those ranks have thinned w/age. And the younger ones are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. by the military leaving a gap not yet ready to be filled. Who was it who broke the back of the air controllers union?
The media has been quick and avid to point out the difference in pay between foreign auto workers and American auto workers. Why is it the media doesn't have to moxie to point out the discrpancy in pay between American CEOs and business uppper echelons and their hourly workers vs foreign CEOs and business upper echelons and their hourly workers?
You begrudge the pilots' the pay and benefits whilst being willing to place your life in their hands? - Reply to this comment
- Deregulation - ain't it grand?
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- Brand expert John Tantillo did a post on his <a href="http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv"> marketing blog</a> a few weeks ago on how airlines should be taking advantage of this opportunity to stress stricter requirements for pilots (when that's actually the case..) and to deal with the issue of the regional carrier brands--either embracing them fully so that their customers can also have confidence in them, or reevaluating who they work with.
<a href="http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2009/05/17/john-tantillos-brand-winner-and-loser-guns-and-airlines.aspx">Tantillo's full post </a> - Reply to this comment
- Welcome to the 10th century where human life is no worth a thing.
Oh wait I mean 21st century where human life is still not worth a thing. - Reply to this comment
- Like every other piece of the American infrastructure this is falling apart also.
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- Well, if they would stop hiring "journalism" failures, they would have tip-top pilots. Anyone i "journalism" is a skank and other things the censors would deny my ability to type! Hey Katie Couric- ever wonder why your ratings are scraping the bottom of the outhouse hole?
- Reply to this comment
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