While QT is still waiting for the Health Care interview to be approved by the interviewees, Ms. Twain supplies this post on another dear topic to Quarter Twain: Aviation.
A Top-Fuel Dragster On Each Wing
I spent the other night reading through the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) transcript from Colgan Air flight 3407 that crashed in Buffalo, NY this past winter. While it does provide valuable information regarding the accident sequence, I think the flying public should find it elucidating for a different reason. The flight crew candidly discusses their concerns, difficulties, and aspirations for their careers. The troubles weighing on the minds of this flight crew should concern the American public who entrusts their lives to these aviators.
The First Officer’s story, in particular, exemplifies the life of a regional airline pilot. On tape, the she discusses her commute from Seattle, where she lives with family, to Newark, which she makes every week to fly her trip. She mentions that her income was only about $15,000 the previous year, but that she is grateful for the flight hours, which are a major factor in being upgraded to a more lucrative captain’s seat or being hired elsewhere. In aviation, flight hours equal experience, and this pilot knows she just has to crank them out for a while.
She would have to have a multiengine commercial license with an instrument rating to fly for an airline. We know from the CVR that she also had her flight instructor license for the purpose of building hours. Assuming $120 per hour for flight time, this training probably cost her around $40,000 for time in an airplane alone, not to mention the cost of ground school and other college classes she probably took. Pilots come out of top aviation schools with debt nearing $100,000. And after that much investment, she had fewer than 700 hours total time when she was hired with Colgan Air.
The First Officer’s flight time is low but not atypical. Most air carriers advertise 1,000 hours minimum time, but expect 1,500 to be competitive. However, in a market where pay is so low and fewer military pilots are filling out the supply, pilots are being hired with lower total time. The First Officer trained at a flight school in Arizona, where she subsequently gained flight time as a CFI. She mentions that she saw more actual IFR (time spent in the clouds flying by reference to instruments) on her Initial Operating Experience (IOE) than she did in her entire time in Arizona. No matter how good the simulated training, no experience can substitute for experiencing the sensory illusions that happen when one has no visual reference to the ground. In addition, her lack of first-hand knowledge of icing proved to be a major factor in the crash.
A lot has been made already about the crew’s level of fatigue, and much should be made of it, not because the flight crew was necessarily doing something wrong, but because the industry is doing things wrong. The First Officer commuted across three time zones to get to work, and once she got there, she decided to fly even though she was feeling sick. Why?
As previously mentioned, she made only about $15,000 a year to start with Colgan Air. Her husband who has a position in the Army made more in a weekend of drills than she did in a month. She clearly cannot afford to live in Newark, and she and her husband chose to live in the Northwest near their families. She can commute from there for nearly free (she mentions a $25 pass benefit). Pass benefits are great for airline employees and are used to commute to work and for personal vacations; they allow employees to live in cities with lower costs of living and commute, but there are drawbacks to this lifestyle.
She mentions feeling sick, and there are sniffles and coughs caught on the CVR to support her complaints. She knows that if she calls in sick after commuting to Newark, she cannot use her pass benefits to fly home. She would have to pay for a hotel room in Newark for a few days. This is industry standard. Since pass benefits may be used for pleasure as well as for commuting, companies assume that when an employee calls in sick prior to using their benefits, they have taken vacation. This is considered an abuse of employee benefits and employees are fired for it.
So this first officer took a long flight across multiple time zones while feeling under the weather. That would be enough to make the best of us feel fatigued. She has to fly her trip congested which, due to the effects of changing pressure, has much more consequence while flying than while working in an office, for example. Then at the end of her day, she has to wait in line for an hour and a half on the taxiway before departing for Buffalo. She has multiple reasons to be fatigued which affect cognitive functions, reaction time, and attention to detail, all of which played a part in the accident sequence.
She is also plagued by numerous concerns regarding her employment: seniority, use of vacation time, etc. Her body is tired and her mind is preoccupied. The concerns she mentions and her state of fatigue are fairly normal.
The FAA dictates a maximum duty time for flight crew members of 16 hours out of 24, a minimum of 8 hours off between shifts, and a maximum of 8 hours on-duty flight time. 8 hours of flight time for a transoceanic crew is one flight. For a regional crew, it could be as many as 8 flights (the legal limit), with the associated up and down and changing cabin pressures. Most unions are able to negotiate better work rules, but when all else fails – like an hour and a half wait on a taxiway, considered outside of airline control – the companies reserve the right to use the limits set forth by the FAA. In fact, Captain Sullenberger mentioned in a recent speech at the Museum of Flight in Washington, D.C. that in this economy we are seeing an increasing progression (regression?) toward the legal minimums for flight crews.
Why is all of this important? Numerous studies over the last several decades have demonstrated the effects of fatigue on cognitive functions. More so than many other professions, flight crews have enormous physical stresses imposed on them in addition to other typical work-related stress. In many cases, they work long days and short nights for very little pay for the first several years of their careers, and it is these people to whom the flying public entrusts their lives.
The closest parallel I can draw is to the medical profession. There has been public outcry about the amounts senior doctors make, as well as the amounts senior pilots make. What the public does not seem to understand is that only an elite few make the amounts they complain about. A senior captain may make $200,000 a year, but considering the investment mentioned earlier, I can’t imagine that that pay scale could come quickly enough. In both professions, the majority of customers entrust their lives to people who are severely fatigued and underpaid. It’s remarkable the accident rate is not higher than it is.
Captain Sullenberger, in his comments to Congress a couple months ago, related that his salary had been cut 40% since September 11th, and that he was concerned that current trends in the industry will not attract the best and brightest pilots. Consider: his ability to glide his aircraft to relative safety in the waters of the Hudson came from years upon years of experience both in the cockpit of an airliner and in the front seat of gliders in his spare time. You don’t get that level of experience out of an employee you are paying $15,000 per year. It isn’t possible, and if passengers want to pay rock-bottom fares, they should understand the risks they are taking.
There is only one way out of this mess, short of more mishaps and crashes. Airlines need to start taking pride in the service they offer, and demanding that passengers pay a reasonable amount for a ticket – and by reasonable, I mean an amount that actually covers the costs of operating an airplane. Passengers need to take greater pride in their lives and their money, and start demanding better service and better safety performance out of the airlines they fly. I haven’t seen an airline say this since September 11th, and it’s the only thing any of them should have said: “Yes, we’re expensive, and it’s worth every penny.”
Colgan Air 3407 CVR Transcript
Great work, Mrs. B.