Reform in pilot training is undercut by industry official heading panel

WASHINGTON-- The Federal Aviation Administration appointed a top official from the regional airline industry to lead a panel proposing new rules for pilot training -- and that panel now wants to gut a key provision of a recently passed law aimed at making the skies safer.
 

Less than three months after Congress passed a bill boosting the minimum number of flight hours for new commercial co-pilots from 250 to 1,500, that FAA committee used a loophole in the law to propose cutting the requirement for actual flying time back to 500 hours.
 

The Families of Continental Flight 3407, who fought for the big boost in required pilot experience, are livid about the proposal -- and about the fact that Scott W. Foose, the vice president for safety at the Regional Airline Association, headed the panel that drew up the recommendations.

 

"We find this development to be absolutely infuriating," said Scott Maurer, whose daughter, Lorin, was killed in the February 2009 plane crash in Clarence Center that claimed 50 lives.

"For a representative of the Regional Airline Association to be in the lead on this major safety initiative is like putting the fox in charge of the security plan for the chicken coop," Maurer added.

A Regional Airline Association spokesman said Foose and the organization would not comment; the spokesman instead steered questions to the FAA.

 

Laura J. Brown, an FAA spokeswoman, stressed that the committee's report was just a recommendation.

"The FAA has one mission: to promote aviation safety," she said. "The FAA is now drafting a proposal to incorporate the congressional mandate as well as other measures to truly improve the quality and scope of pilot training and experience. While an advisory committee did recently submit recommendations to the agency, it is not the sole factor used to determine what will be in our proposal."

 

Brown said she did not know who appointed Foose to head the committee. But a source involved in drawing up the proposal said someone at the FAA chose Foose to head the panel -- even though the regional airlines have been the subject of unprecedented scrutiny in the wake of the Clarence Center crash.

 

The last six major U.S. air crashes have involved the regionals, which are subcontractors that handle smaller flights for the big-name airlines. Colgan Air, a Continental subcontractor, operated Flight 3407.

Members of the Flight 3407 families group said they were upset because regional airlines have a track record that shows that they don't put safety first.

 

"[The Regional Airline Association] has one -- and only one -- priority in this rulemaking: for its regional members to be able to continue to hire low-experience pilots who are forced to work for less than $20,000 a year," as did the co-pilot of Flight 3407, Maurer said.

 

Federal safety investigators found that pilot error was at the root of the Clarence Center crash. And for that reason, the families group made boosting pilot experience a central goal in its quest for aviation safety legislation.

The families appeared to get what they wanted when Congress passed a wide-ranging air safety bill boosting the minimum experience requirement to 1,500 hours for new co-pilots.

 

But that legislation also included a provision saying the FAA administrator "may allow specific academic training courses ... to be credited toward the total flight hours required."

The Wall Street Journal first revealed the contents of the FAA Aviation Rulemaking Committee's report, and The Buffalo News obtained a copy Tuesday. In the report, the panel concocted an elaborate regimen of training courses that could make up two-thirds of the required 1,500 flight hours for beginning co-pilots.

 

An Air Transport Pilot license "may not be issued to any candidate with fewer than 500 actual hours of total flight time," the draft report says.
Asked to comment on the proposal, the lawmaker who led the fight for the aviation safety bill in the House, Rep. Jerry F. Costello, D-Ill., said:

 

"The new safety law explicitly requires 1,500 flight hours. Any modification of that number has to be justified as making safety stronger than current ... requirements."

 

Meanwhile, the Regional Airline Association said in written comments about the proposal that it "fully supports the majority recommendations regarding first-officer qualification standards as providing a proper mix of the experience and academic/training approaches that will best ensure safety."

However, the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations, a union group, opposed the training proposal, as did the National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation.

 

"We do agree that a solid educational foundation is important and will likely produce a well-trained pilot; however, it simply cannot replace or serve as a substitute for actual flight experience," the air safety group said.

The Flight 3407 families agreed.

 

"You cannot convince any of us that any classroom-based training is a viable substitute for actually getting in the cockpit," said John Kausner of Clarence, whose daughter, Ellyce, was killed on Flight 3407.

Karen Eckert, who lost a sister, 9/11 activist Beverly Eckert, in the crash, said the Obama administration and FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt should "come down firmly on the side of safety and the traveling public as the airlines attempt to sabotage yet another critical safety measure."

 

Maurer emphasized, "We are going to fight this to the hilt."

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