It's probably just a coincidence, but the timing couldn’t be more ironic. Aviation news was dominated last week by 3 days of NTSB hearings that sought the cause of the Colgan Air Flight 3407 crash that destroyed a home while en route to Buffalo, NY. Throughout the hearings, pictures emerged of pilots who were fatigued and lacked key training, a captain who failed to disclose several checkride failures, and of a two-tier industry where regional airlines pay new-hire pilots little more than minimum wage. Then, late this afternoon, the FAA announced that they are proposing a $1.3 million civil penalty from Florida-based Gulfstream International Airlines, the first airline to employ the flight 3407 captain in 2004 and 2005. The alleged violations include...
improper improper scheduling of flight crew duty time, and the installation of unapproved air conditioner compressors and improperly maintained vent blowers on the airline's fleet of 27 BE-1900-D aircraft. The airline flies under the Continental Connection name in Florida and other states.
According to the FAA, a “review of the airline's electronic record-keeping system for tracking crew duty and rest time revealed that Gulfstream International did not accurately input the proper data from its manually generated hard-copy aircraft logbook records into the electronic system. The discrepancies resulted in scheduling crew members in excess of daily and weekly flight time limitations.
"During a June 2008 inspection, the FAA determined that the airline had installed unapproved automotive air conditioner compressors on its aircraft between September 2006 and May 2008. Following the FAA inspection, the airline grounded all of the affected aircraft and replaced the units with approved aircraft air conditioner compressors.
"In the course of a July 2008 inspection of Gulfstream International avionics and component shops in Fort Lauderdale, the FAA discovered that the airline had installed improperly maintained vent blowers on six planes between January 2008 and June 2008. Following that inspection, the airline replaced the blowers with properly maintained units."
What It Means
The Flight 3407 Captain left Gulfstream International in 2005 to join Colgan Air. The activity described in the complaint appears to have occurred after he left the company. However, if the activities described were purposeful attempts to deceive the FAA about crew rest times, one has to wonder what type of learning environment this provided for a copilot in his first airline job.
Last week the FAA insisted that regional airlines are just as safe as major airlines. That’s debatable, since 7 of the last 8 crashes have been on regional airlines. However in the 1980’s, when the regionals didn’t represent 50% of the takeoffs and landings as they do today, the majors had a worse safety record.
One huge difference is that the major airlines generally hire pilots with thousands of hours of experience while the regionals have at times hired pilots with hundreds of hours of experience. If what the FAA meant when they said that regionals are as safe as the majors is that both meet the same low minimum standards, it may be time to raise those standards.
Comments