Chop chop? Wrong, mate! Before you get abusive, I suggest a little research on the topic. So, what does your SMS alert say chop chop, given this:
Pilots Set Up for Fatigue, Officials Say Ny Times May 13
WASHINGTON — The head of the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday told executives of Colgan Air, whose plane crashed outside Buffalo in February, that paying new pilots very low wages without taking into account that some would commute across the country to their jobs constituted “winking and nodding” at safety policy.
Members of the board said that the crew of the twin-engine turboprop that crashed, killing all 49 people on board and one on the ground, was set up for fatigue and inattention before they even took off, partly because of the structure of the commuter airline business.
In the crash, the first officer, Rebecca L. Shaw, 24, a Colgan employee for about a year, apparently pulled an all-nighter to get a free transcontinental trip to work. She was living near Seattle and commuting to her job at Colgan’s operation in Newark, according to board investigators. She flew from Seattle to Memphis in a spare seat on one FedEx jet, and to Newark on another, planning to sleep in a crew lounge, investigators said. The airline said Wednesday evening that her rate of pay, for a minimum of 75 hours a month, was $23,900 a year.
The captain, Marvin D. Renslow, 47, who had been with Colgan since September 2005, had flown to Newark from his Florida home the previous evening. He was logged on to a computer at 3 a.m.; investigators are not sure where he slept, but he was known to have sometimes used the crew lounge at Newark, even though the airline had threatened to fire pilots who used it for overnight stays. The average salary for a captain is $67,000, Colgan said.
The board on Wednesday held its second of three days of hearings on the Feb. 12 crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air. The turboprop plummeted to the ground during its approach to Buffalo Niagara International Airport. While a final report is months away, broad recommendations seem likely, especially concerning fatigue.
A Federal Aviation Administration scientist, Tom Nesthus, testified that sleepy pilots were generally unable to judge the extent of their impairment, and likely to have trouble concentrating and following multiple sources of information. In the crash, the crew lost track of their deteriorating airspeed, and when a warning system activated, Captain Renslow reacted wrongly, pulling up the nose of the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400, instead of pushing it down, to regain airspeed and improve the angle of the wings.
The plane went into a stall, meaning the combination of angle and speed left the wings unable to generate lift.
The acting chairman of the board, Mark V. Rosenker, said the company was “winking and nodding” about its pilots’ commuting practices. Another board member, Kathryn O. Higgins, said, “When you put together the commuting patterns, the pay levels, the fact that your crew rooms that aren’t supposed to be used, are being used, I think it’s a recipe for an accident.”
Board investigators found that the crew lounge was, in fact, used inappropriately, and the airline recognized the problem with the practice. “It’s not quality rest,” Harry Mitchel, Colgan’s vice president for flight operations, testified. “There’s a lot of activity in our crew rooms.”
A safety board member, Deborah A. P. Hersman, said Wednesday that Ms. Shaw had told one FedEx pilot that there was a “couch with my name on it” in the Colgan pilot’s lounge in Newark where she would sleep.
But Daniel Morgan, vice president for safety and regulatory performance at Colgan Air, said the airline had abided strictly by rules on how many hours a pilot could work in a shift, and how many hours were given between shifts, and could not control employees’ off-hours behavior. “You’re adults, you’re professionals, use the time we’ve given you to rest,” he said. Pilots could share apartments near the base, he said.
Both pilots can be heard yawning on the cockpit voice recorder.
Investigators found that Colgan’s pilots frequently live hundreds or thousands of miles from their crew base, and board members were openly skeptical that the two pilots were atypical.
Mr. Rosenker, the acting chairman, said during a break in the hearing that he and his colleagues had not surveyed commuting practices at other commuter airlines but that it might be revealing for the F.A.A., which licenses pilots and airlines, to do so.
At the hearing, Ms. Higgins asked, “What’s the nexus between commuting and fatigue?”
“Boy, that’s difficult,” Mr. Mitchel answered, adding that the answer would depend on the individual.
Over two days of hearings, the airline has varied between protesting its blamelessness and asking for help. The company said it was trying to make sure pilots complied with its fatigue policy — including a requirement not to commute in by plane on the day a duty shift begins.
On Tuesday it said Captain Renslow had lied on his job application by listing only one of the three times that he had failed a hands-on proficiency exam, called a check ride, and that the airline was hampered by insufficiencies in a federal law intended to help carriers gather information like that on job applicants. One company witness asked the board for help in getting Congress to change the laws.
But Colgan had not taken the step that some safety board experts pointed out, asking pilots to sign privacy waivers so the Federal Aviation Administration could divulge their records to the company.
After Colgan hired Captain Renslow, he failed two more check rides, but eventually was certified to fly the Dash 8, the plane that crashed.
And reel? Most of my fellow QF pilots that I have talked to, agree with me. I just have the guts to say it, and not try to be all sissy and politically correct. Sorry, mate.