Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000 yr

[ready2fly]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

I know All that i am trying to say, Is that hopefully the regionals will increase their pay a little bit. (HOPEFULLY) I'm not saying that they will. More than likley they will not.

Simply put: They will not.

As long as there are a glut of new pilots who will literally sell their souls to fly for an airline, the regionals will continue to pay whatever they choose to pay....and those pilots will wet themselves when they receive the interview invitations...and gladly say "THANK YOU" when they get hired.

It's only after they get their first few checks and realize that it's damned hard to support a family, let alone ones self, on that pay - do they start to bitch and moan about pay.

I know because I'm just as guilty of the above as any of my brothers and sisters who do the same.

Secondly: this is not a new issue.

Hell, even talk show hosts have brought light to the poor pay at the regional level.

Third: The flying public absolutely does not give a damn. Just as long as they get to point B from point A without breaking their bank, they're good.

We are the ones to blame for what we get paid. We do it to ourselves. It's not the "evil regional airlines" fault that we allow our pilot representatives/union reps to accept their pittance.

Until pilots on the whole stand up and say "enough" .... and stick to it. It'll continue.

The problem we have goes back to my first point: When/if we ever do stand up and refue what we are offered - there will be tens of thousands of new pilots willing and able to take our place.

It's a vicious cycle.

Welcome to aviation.

Lastly: The co-pilots paycheck did not bring down flight 3407. I have no idea what the final outcome will be of the NTSB investigation, but speaking from the experience of years of aviation ligitation experience and dealing with the NTSB - I can guaran-damn-tee you that Pay will not be a factor in the final outcome.

 

[future pilot]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

Simply put: They will not.

As long as there are a glut of new pilots who will literally sell their souls to fly for an airline, the regionals will continue to pay whatever they choose to pay....and those pilots will wet themselves when they receive the interview invitations...and gladly say "THANK YOU" when they get hired.

It's only after they get their first few checks and realize that it's damned hard to support a family, let alone ones self, on that pay - do they start to bitch and moan about pay.

I know because I'm just as guilty of the above as any of my brothers and sisters who do the same.

Secondly: this is not a new issue.

Hell, even talk show hosts have brought light to the poor pay at the regional level.

Third: The flying public absolutely does not give a damn. Just as long as they get to point B from point A without breaking their bank, they're good.

We are the ones to blame for what we get paid. We do it to ourselves. It's not the "evil regional airlines" fault that we allow our pilot representatives/union reps to accept their pittance.

Until pilots on the whole stand up and say "enough" .... and stick to it. It'll continue.

The problem we have goes back to my first point: When/if we ever do stand up and refue what we are offered - there will be tens of thousands of new pilots willing and able to take our place.

It's a vicious cycle.

Welcome to aviation.

Lastly: The co-pilots paycheck did not bring down flight 3407. I have no idea what the final outcome will be of the NTSB investigation, but speaking from the experience of years of aviation ligitation experience and dealing with the NTSB - I can guaran-damn-tee you that Pay will not be a factor in the final outcome.

You might whant to check out this thread. "Remember 3407" Airline Labor Reform Act. i would say something accept im not a regional pilot YET, So i do not know what the working conditions are like first hand.

 

[ready2fly]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

You might whant to check out this thread. "Remember 3407" Airline Labor Reform Act. i would say something accept im not a regional pilot YET, So i do not know what the working conditions are like first hand.

Thanks for the heads-up. And I'm on board, but as I said, from my experience - I am sceptical there will be any results that favor a bump in pay.

Better to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, though, so I'm in. Lock, stock and barrel.

 

[Bumblebee]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

Thanks for the heads-up. And I'm on board, but as I said, from my experience - I am sceptical there will be any results that favor a bump in pay.

Better to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, though, so I'm in. Lock, stock and barrel.

after you finish your honeydos . . .:laff:

 

[LineUpAndWait]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

Small Airlines’ Safety Standards Questioned at Crash Hearing

By John Hughes

May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Determining whether regional airlines meet the same safety standards as big carriers is “crucial” as investigators probe a Pinnacle Airlines Corp. plane crash that killed 50 people, a U.S. safety board member said.

National Transportation Safety Board member Kitty Higgins asked a pilots-union leader if there are differences in pay, training, crew scheduling and commuting policies between the two types of carriers. The NTSB is in the last of three days of hearings in Washington on the accident.

The board is examining hiring and training at Pinnacle’s Colgan unit and the possibility of pilot error and fatigue in the February crash near Buffalo, New York. The regional carrier was flying for Continental Airlines Inc.

“This is the central issue in this accident,” Higgins said. “Do we have one level of safety?”

Rory Kay, air safety chairman for the Air Line Pilots Association, responded, “No.”

Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, urged regulators today to reevaluate pilot training criteria.

The Bombardier Inc. Dash 8 Q400 plane crashed Feb. 12 in Clarence Center, New York. The dead included one person on the ground and all 49 people on board the plane. The NTSB won’t issue its conclusions for several months.

Long-Distance Commuting

Regional airline pilots are among the lowest paid in the industry, and NTSB member Debbie Hersman asked whether their salaries may force them to commute long distances to their jobs, increasing the risk they arrive at work tired.

Rebecca Shaw, 24, copilot of the Colgan flight, traveled from her home in Seattle to work the day of the accident, flying all night to arrive in Newark just before 6:30 a.m., according to the NTSB. Her text messages and activities during the day indicate she may not have had much time for sleep, NTSB evidence shows.

Hersman said an e-mail she received from a pilot at Delta Air Lines Inc.’s Comair unit complained that 301 cockpit-crew members were being relocated to New York from Cincinnati.

While home prices run about $131,000 in Cincinnati, they cost about $437,000 in the New York area, she said. “Clearly there’s going to be increasing expenditures for individuals.”

Pilots at regional airlines are paid less than their counterparts at bigger carriers in part because they usually have fewer years of service and fly smaller planes.

A first officer with about five years of experience makes an average of $84,300 a year at a major airline such as Continental or Delta, while a first officer at Pinnacle with the same years of service makes $32,100, according to AIR Inc., an Atlanta-based firm that tracks pilot pay.

Shaw, the first officer in the Colgan crash, had an annual salary of $23,900, Pinnacle spokesman Joe Williams said in an e- mail yesterday. The average for a captain on the type of aircraft involved in the crash is $67,000, he said.

Ticket Purchases

Consumers often buy tickets for a major carrier only to realize later they’re flying on the regional airline, Higgins said.

“You don’t buy a ticket on Colgan, you buy a ticket on Continental,” she said.

The Colgan crash isn’t the first by a regional carrier the board has examined in recent years.

Comair pilots used the wrong runway for a flight that killed 49 people in Kentucky in 2006 because they failed to use lights, signs and other aids to identify their location, the NTSB determined.

A Corporate Airlines flight crashed in 2004, killing 13 people, in Kirksville, Missouri, because the pilots didn’t follow procedures and flew the plane too low into trees, according to the NTSB.

Connecting Dots

NTSB Acting Chairman Mark Rosenker told reporters that “we haven’t been able to connect those dots” to find that regional carriers are any less safe than large airlines. Two of the more recent airline accidents the board is investigating involved large carriers -- a Continental jet in December at the Denver airport and a US Airways Group Inc. plane that ditched in New York’s Hudson River in January.

Les Dorr, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, said in an interview that regional carriers and large airlines must meet identical federal safety standards.

Colgan said yesterday that it provides double the FAA- required crew training time for the type of aircraft in the February accident.

“Our crew training programs meet or exceed the regulatory requirements for all major airlines,” Colgan said in a statement.

‘Unfairly Singled Out’

The regional airline industry “is being unfairly singled out,” said Roger Cohen of the Regional Airline Association, an industry group, in an interview.

“We are obviously looking at the lessons learned out of this,” Cohen said of the Colgan crash. “Even before this accident, we have been focused on all of the issues that have been raised here during the NTSB investigation. It’s important to note that our member airlines are operating under the exact same rules” as the bigger carriers.

To contact the reporters on this story: John Hughes in Washington at jhughes5@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 14, 2009 15:22 EDT

 

[Firebird2XC]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

Thanks for the heads-up. And I'm on board, but as I said, from my experience - I am sceptical there will be any results that favor a bump in pay.

Better to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, though, so I'm in. Lock, stock and barrel.

You bet your keister you're on board. We need your 'special skills'.

 

[SpiraMirabilis]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

You do not need 1200 PIC for the ATP. The only PIC time you need to take the ATP checkride is 250 PIC, 100 PIC X-Country, and 25 PIC Night. Plus of course 1500 TT, 500 XC, 100 Night, and 75 Instrument.

You do for an ICAO ATP, no airline I know of allows an ATP with the ICAO limitation.

 

[SpiceWeasel]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

You do for an ICAO ATP, no airline I know of allows an ATP with the ICAO limitation.

Well Pinnacle does. All we need to upgrade (when that ever happens) is 250 PIC... and if you don't have 250 PIC they do a 2 for 1 deal of SIC-->PIC

 

[juan valdez]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

Maybe.

I flew with pilots in the military I wouldn't let drive me to the airport if I had a say in the matter.

One of them was even a pilot-mill graduate with a CFI certificate. He routinely went to pieces.. absolute pieces.. during routine training flights with simulated EPs.

We had a pilot in a 20 ft hover, at night on NVG's, get frustrated at her inability to stabilize her hover to land and threw her hands up in the air off the controls. I mean seriously, there's three other people to think of on that airplane and she just quits. Real good training by the military.
There was at least 3 pilots in my squadron that everyone was scared to fly with. Even with those three having Aircraft Commander sign offs, two always had to fly with a major or above.

 

[3enginejock]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

You do for an ICAO ATP, no airline I know of allows an ATP with the ICAO limitation.

My airline does... As do a lot of others. Otherwise how would anyone hired with less than 1200 PIC ever get upgraded to captain.

 

[tonyw]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

Damn, I wish I made 16K a year... Hopefully people will start to realize that they can't continue down this path and expect accidents not to happen. Food, water, shelter... then fly. Not the other way around... the only way to guarantee that safety is to increase pay and have better work rules in the contract, if not the FAR's.

As long as people are willing to take crap wages in order to have the title "airline pilot" on their business card, companies will pay those wages.

I'm not sure what the FAA can do about the wages part. What they can do is mandate more rest so that the people doing the flying are well rested and ready to go.

Of course, that would cost the airlines more so they'll bitch and moan and scream about how they can't do it during a recession, blah, blah, blah.

If I were a congressional rep and someone said that to me, I'd say, and what is the cost of a crash?

 

[Clearblue]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

If I were a congressional rep and someone said that to me, I'd say, and what is the cost of a crash?

And someone would give you an exact price.

 

[aloft]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

The captain meeting the "mins" at most (not all) legacies says it all. His experience level is where he'd be STARTING from at a legacy.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the left seat of an RJ is where one should go only after rising through the ranks of the widebody jets as an FO, NOT after a year or two in the right seat of that RJ.

By holding your nose in the air and declaring that flying "little jets" was somehow beneath you and thus letting the RJ genie out of the bottle, you mainline types share some of the blame in accidents like Colgan 3407.

 

[Clearblue]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the left seat of an RJ is where one should go only after rising through the ranks of the widebody jets as an FO, NOT after a year or two in the right seat of that RJ.

By holding your nose in the air and declaring that flying "little jets" was somehow beneath you and thus letting the RJ genie out of the bottle, you mainline types share some of the blame in accidents like Colgan 3407.

So, Student-> CFI-> RJ FO-> Widebody FO-> RJ Captain-> Widebody Captain?

Seems like there's a gap between RJ captain and Widebody captain.

 

[aloft]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

Insert narrowbody CA as appropriate. Whatever, you get the idea. ALL Pt 121 captains should have more than just a few years of Pt 121 experience.

Can you imagine how much safer RJs would be if their captains all came out of 777 or 767 right seats? Can you imagine how much more RJ FOs could learn from those captains?

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

Aloft,

In early 2000 I was at US Airways. We basically ripped the cover off of the Comair contract and handed those payrates to management and told them, "We want all flying 50 seats or greater."

They still said we were too expensive. We had the most restrictive scope in the industry and did everything but BEG for the flying.

We hardly turned our noses up at it. We KNEW they were parking the DC9s. They had just parked the F28s and the F100s and MD80s were next. There was no doubt in our mind that the Replacement Jets were going to do just that and if we didn't act quickly we were going to lose thousands of jobs.

After 9/11 Rakesh Gangwal said, "Force Majeur opened certain doors to us that were not open before..."

What doors? Minimum fleet count, minimum captain positions, and scope... they were all virtually eliminated along with over 1500 pilot jobs.

So yeah...I would have been DELIGHTED to have the RJs on the mainline property. If they were, i'd likely still be there.

 

[surreal1221]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

By holding your nose in the air and declaring that flying "little jets" was somehow beneath you and thus letting the RJ genie out of the bottle, you mainline types share some of the blame in accidents like Colgan 3407.

It's my understanding that seagull works for a major that doesn't carry any human passengers - and more importantly - doesn't outsource any of their respective flying to little jets.

 

[KLB]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

I wonder will the FedEx crash be scrutinized as much as 3407 is being raked over?

 

[Orange Anchor]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

After 9/11 Rakesh Gangwal said, "Force Majeur opened certain doors to us that were not open before..."

That was one of the few times Johnny Quest and Hadji spoke the truth. Brutal and frank but it did reveal their intent.

 

[seagull]

Re: Co-pilot of doomed Buffalo Flight 3407, was paid $16,000

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the left seat of an RJ is where one should go only after rising through the ranks of the widebody jets as an FO, NOT after a year or two in the right seat of that RJ.

By holding your nose in the air and declaring that flying "little jets" was somehow beneath you and thus letting the RJ genie out of the bottle, you mainline types share some of the blame in accidents like Colgan 3407.

Obviously, RJ's should be on the mainline seniority lists, but that appears to be not an option. As it is, then, it's hard to fault someone for leaving a regional for a major, and the regional is stuck with people that do not have a lot of experience.