Slave wages for airline pilots, cockpit crews

Probably the most startling revelations during the National Transit Safety Board hearings on the fatal crash of a commuter airliner en route to Buffalo which which killed all 49 people on board last February  were how low the salaries for the cockpit crews were and how the cockpit crew of Colgan Air flight 3407 was so fatigued that  expert witnesses testified that this level of fatigue is the equivalent of "drunk driving."

Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, said policies involving fatigue can be difficult to implement because workers don't like having their employers interfere with their personal lives. "It's hard to tell people what to do during their day off," he said.

Voss, a former pilot, said he'd felt fatigue while on the job. "There are times you work long hours," Voss said. "It's insidious. It's just like any other impairment. It's like having too much to drink. It can sneak up on you."

Stephanie Chen, writing for CNN.com, said that the issue was part of an FAA sponsored panel last year:

At an FAA symposium last year, John A. Caldwell, a fatigue management consultant for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army, talked about a phenomenon called "micro-sleep." A pilot falls asleep for a fraction of a second to several seconds because of sleep deprivation. Caldwell said his research found that 80 percent of regional pilots admitted to nodding off during a flight.

Officials from a union representing pilots of regional carriers urged that the FAA to deal with this dangerous issue:

“We must address pilot fatigue in all types of flying from long-haul international to multi-leg domestic,” said Captain Rory Kay, the executive air safety chairman of Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l (ALPA), following his testimony. “While ALPA recognizes that individual pilots have the responsibility to report for duty fit to fly, we also recognize that those pilots must be given the tools to fulfill that responsibility.”

According to Chen, a prominent travel writer and blogger, Joe Sharkey, recently wrote in his blog "High Anxiety" that the investigation reveals that problems facing airline pilots extend beyond fatigue. Pilots are also underpaid, which can pressure them to get second jobs and consequently tire them more, he said.

Sharkey pointed the finger directly at the FAA:

The basic ugly truth -- long known by regional airline pilots and by those of us who follow these things -- is that many regional airline pilots work in a culture of chronic fatigue, in a sub-tier of the air-travel industry where captains might make $50,000 a year and first officers might make less than $20,000, and that the official FAA-sanctioned duty-time regulations that supposedly ensure that pilots have enough time to sleep (7 hours, which of course includes the time to get from airport to hotel and back) are a national scandal.

The feckless FAA -- which incidentally has been operating without a director for almost two years -- is complicit in the grim fiction that safety standards are just fine, evidence aside. The N.T.S.B., to its credit, is digging out the ugly reality, case by case, question by question.

Colgan, a subsidiary of Pinnacle Airlines, supplies regional-airline service to Continental and other airlines. The plane that crashed on approach to Buffalo was a 70-seat Dash 8- Q400 commuter turboprop. 

In the cockpit were Captain Marvin D. Renslow, 47, and First Officer Rebecca Shaw, 24. Renslow had slight experience in the Dash 8 Q400; Shaw had more, but had been on the job for only a little over a year. Shaw's base salary was about $16,000 a year (it could have gone up to around $24,000 with overtime), and Renslow was making around $60,000. To save money, Shaw had recently moved in with her parents near Seattle, necessitating her cross-country commute to work.

The lengthy commute was necessitated by cost cutting measures implemented by the regional carrier, Sharkey said:

Colgan, incidentally, has in recent years closed about 10 of its regional crew bases, which now number 20 at locations around the country, with the result that many pilots are now commuting (via free hops on airplanes) long distances to reach the airport where they the clock then starts ticking for their official workday. Also, the word "commuting" describes pilots who need to get to one airport to start a new shift from the airport where their previous flight ended. Shaw was based in Newark but had recently moved back to her native Washington state. 

 NTSB officials said investigations showed Shaw worked at a coffee shop while working as a pilot when she was stationed out of Norfolk, Virginia., reported Chen.

Clearly there is something wrong with THAT picture. Not only are pilots grossly underpaid, but they sometimes take on as much as $100,000 in debt to go to flight school before they are even hired at wages that are lower than a full time employee at McDonald's or Dunkin' Donuts.

 The direct testimony at the hearing noted by Sharkey, includes these startling revelations in response to questions from NTSB member Debbie Hersman to an official with Colgan, Harry Mitchel (CQ), the vice president of flight operations: 

H: "Mr. Mitchel, when you talked about a 16-hour duty day, were you familiar with the first officer's schedule the day before the accident?"

M: "Yes, m'am, I am aware."

H: "So she began the day by waking at 9 or 10 in the morning; she started her commute from Seattle that evening; she commuted from Seattle to Memphis, stayed in a crew lounge in Memphis from midnight to 4 a.m., commuted from Memphis to Newark from 4 to 6.30, and then hung out in a crew lounge in Newark until her 1.30 show-time. The accident occurred that evening. That looks like about a 36-hour clock to me. I think at best maybe there was an opportunity -- I'm not sure if she could get it -- but there might have been the opportunity for 7 hours' sleep during that commute. But it sounds pretty horrible to me. It's not something I would want, to try to achieve my sleep on those legs from Seattle to Memphis, in a crew lounge in Memphis, and then from Memphis to Newark. Do you think this violates kind of the spirit of duty time?"

MITCHEL: "I think it violates the professionalism of a crew member. We can't dictate to a crew member what they do on their own time. We hire professionals, and those professionals we expect should show up fresh and ready to fly that aircraft, and we provide the adequate rest for those individuals. There is no difference: If my wife has a baby and I'm up all night with my new-born and I get no sleep -- same situation. If I am fatigued, I shouldn't fly that airplane."

HERSMAN: "Your commuting policy says crew members shouldn't commute on the day that their shift begins, but she [First Officer Shaw] began the commute on the day before her shift began, but she finished her commute on the day the shift began. How do you monitor this policy and how is it enforced?"

M: "Again, it not a firm hard policy. It's guidelines to our crew member. ... We just give those pilots the guidelines to try to make an appropriate professional decision, and giving those guidelines to our pilots is our responsibility. How that individual or those individuals execute their duties and responsibilities on their own time is up to those individuals." 

Another NTSB member Kitty Higgins zeroed in on earlier testimony which indicated that most Colgan pilots were unable to afford to live in the Newark area on such a low salary, thus necessitating long commutes to work:

HIGGINS: "A hundred thirty-seven Newark-based pilots are commuting, and if I did the math correctly, 20 percent of those pilots live more than 1,000 miles from the Newark base, and another 14 percent live 400 or more miles. So that's more than a third of the pilots based in Newark ... commuting extensive distances. ... How do you define duty time?"

MITCHEL: "Duty time is specifically outlined in the FAA regulations."

H: "And what does it say?"

M: "Unless it's in front of me, I do not have it memorized."

H: "Does duty time include commuting time?"

M: "No, m'am."

H: "So the fact that the first officer [Shaw] essentially commuted on two flights to get to the crew base ... that doesn't count in terms of duty time?"

M: "That is correct."

H: "Do you think that affects the issue of fatigue? What is the nexus between commuting and fatigue?"

M: "... it's very difficult for me to answer that question unless there was a specific issue [Sharkey's comment: Isn't the Buffalo crash the specific issue at hand??] ... We expect fatigue- management of our pilots, and we expect those professional pilots to be able to manage fatigue."

H: "... I know I've flown a red-eye, in a real seat, and it's pretty tough. And the first thing I want to do when I fly a red-eye is to find a bed someplace. In fact, she [Shaw] commented to one of the pilots that was flying her that there was a couch in the crew-room that had her name on it. ... The Colgan policy is [pilots] are not supposed to sleep in the crew-room, but it turns out that they are sleeping in the crew-room. ... What are the policies and procedures?"

M: -- "One of them is sleeping overnight, because it is not an adequate rest facility, is prohibited for our crew members ... First Officer Shaw went through our pre-training program, she went through our CRM [Crew Rest Management] program. Within our CRM program, we gave that pilot [Shaw] some fatigue-management tools through her training. ... if a pilot was found sleeping in the crew-room, we would discuss it with the pilot about what going on. We are also in complete dialog with our pilots on a crew-scheduling committee to try to adapt and prosper commutable scheduling-legs, to assist in this very challenging environment in Newark."

H: "In the crew-member policy handbook it says, and I'm quoting: 'While commuting by flight crew-members is understood and accepted by the company, in no way will commuting be deemed a mitigating factor in the flight crew-member's scheduling, punctuality and demeanor. Flight crew-members will be fully accountable for their timely arrival and appearance at their base. Any and all expenses incurred because of commuting will be borne by the flight crew-member. Crew-members should not attempt to commute to their base the same day they're scheduled to work.' I don't see anywhere in there where there any mention of the risks of commuting or the effects of commuting, in terms of fatigue ... You've got a policy that acknowledges that pilots are going to commute ... You've got a policy that says that crew-rooms are not to be used as motel rooms, but in fact they were -- in many instances, that's what they were being used for, for people to sleep. We've got a standard of the company that says that safety is our mission, our most-important objective -- but we know from previous accidents that fatigue is a huge factor. ... where does that all come together for someone who says, `Wait a minute: What is going on here?'"

Isn't it obvious? Colgan and its parent corporation are trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the airline. One way they do this is by cutting corners. If Colgan had to pay for hotel rooms for the flight crew it would have cut into their profit.

Colgan also appeared to cut corners when it came to training the cockpit crew as neither Shaw nor Renslow was experienced enough to deal with the icy conditions on that fateful evening in February. Wall Street Journal reporter Andy Pasztor has details of an in-flight conversation between Shaw and Renslow:

Icing was on the crew's mind approaching Buffalo in snow and mist. Starting four minutes before the crash, and just before rushing through the descent checklist, the crew talked about dramatic buildup of ice around the windshield. "Oh yeah, it's full of ice," the co-pilot said. The captain replied, "that's the most I've seen . . . in a long time." But instead of discussing their situation and agreeing on a plan of action in case of an emergency, the crew immediately switched to discussing personal anecdotes regarding icing.

Co-pilot Shaw, for example, is quoted on the transcript reminiscing about how little experience she had with ice during her early training flying in the Southwest U.S. "I had more actual time (experiencing icing) on my first day" with Colgan "than I did in the 1,600 (flight) hours I had when I came here."

The co-pilot, who had been hired by Colgan less than a year before, went on to say: "I really wouldn't mind going through a winter in the Northeast before I have to upgrade to captain."

Pazstor placed the blame squarely on the cockpit crew:

Data released by the National Transportation Safety Board indicates that the stall wasn't triggered by ice accumulation, but rather Capt. Renslow's pulling back on the controls and overpowering an automatic stall-protection system that was pushing the nose of the plane down in order to regain a safe flying speed.

 The data confirmed earlier reports that Capt. Renslow continued to pull back on the controls to raise the plane's nose during the entire seven seconds the so-called stick-shaker was warning the crew about an impending stall. The normal reaction to such a warning is to lower the nose in order to gain speed.

I disagree with Pasztor's theory as I maintain that fatigue clouded the judgement of the crew, causing them to react counter to their training.  With that in mind, I refer you back to NTSB member Higgins' testimony:

"One of the things I learned since coming here [to the N.T.S.B., investigating aviation accidents] is sometimes the individual does not recognize fatigue. You don't know how tired you really are. Fatigue has been compared to essentially driving drunk. It has the same effect on an individual as alcohol. ...I think that's a recipe for an accident. And that is what we have here."