Greg Feith on Colgan 3407

granlistillo

granlistillo

Well-Known Member
Not sure if posted, but Greg Feith (seen on Air Crash Investigation/Air Emergency) seems to think there is a link between safety and compensation.

Excerpt posted, full article link here:
http://www.petergreenberg.com/2009/...lead-investigator-weighs-in-on-buffalo-crash/
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PG: This is what gets me angry. The men and women at the NTSB do a great job of investigating and coming up with probable causes and then make recommendations to the regulatory body which, in this case, was the FAA. It’s a no-brainer. You need this piece of equipment on the plane, and then we have a repeat of the same tragic incident, and nothing has been done. There’s got to be someone held accountable for this.
greg-feith-face.jpg
GF: I agree a thousand percent. We’ve seen it over the years. We’ve lost thousands of people, we’ve made numerous recommendations before and after, and again we still don’t have full compliance with that recommendation. On Continental Connection Flight 3407, the co-pilot was 24 years old, making less money a year than a janitor. She could not afford to live where she was based, had to take two red-eye flights back to back in order to make her flight, and had no experience in icing conditions. Meanwhile, the pilot had not been trained to operate a plane in those conditions—and in fact had failed numerous tests which should have disqualified him from sitting in the left seat.
You have to remember that aviation is very complex. The best way to explain it is that if you take a driving test, and you do all the things required except you knock over the cones for the parallel parking. You do a little bit of training, go back, pass the test, and get your license. Does that mean you’re a bad driver? No. Same thing with pilots.
A lot of pilots have a “disqual.” There are so many aspects that they have to worry about and perform, if you miss one part of it, they send you back for retraining and then you come back and get recertified. So that isn’t necessarily a good evaluator of a pilot’s skills and knowledge.
But, these two crew members were not plugged in to the dynamic situation they were flying in, which was this icing condition. The fact that they were in it for a very long time, they had a total disregard for the gravity of the situation—they were off on their speeds by almost forty knot—they had a lot of extraneous conversation not related to flight, all of those things lead to bad operational discipline. You have to look at the airline, its corporate culture and how they enforce pilots to perform as they are required and as they have been trained. And none of that took place which was evident in the public hearing last week.
 
Icing conditions, compensation, age, failures-these things are all smoke and mirrors that represent an agenda that people want to see acted upon. This is all fine. But you'll never convince me low pay caused this plane to crash. Two stupid people caused this plane to crash. I'd rather see some sort of action taken on the practice of buying jobs. How many regional pilots in the last 10 years have been at the controls of crashes. The number of Gulfstream guys is enough to make one sit back and think HOLY CRAP!!!
 
I dont see him making a link between compensation and safety at all. Sounds more like he is making a link between rule enforcement and safety as well as the FAA's lack of compliance with the NTSB's recommendations. Also appears to be saying there might be a link between living in base and safety, since he mentions she had to take two red eyes to get to work, but many pilots do that who make substantially more money than she did. The fact that she didnt make enough to live in base can easily be handled without raising pilots pay a penny, the airline can simply provide a cheap hotel room or a crash pad for pilots who dont live in base and require you be there 8 hours early. Or, make it so you MUST live in base.
 
Just shooting in the breeze here before I go see who is texting me on the celly, but I'll bet you it's like this:

If you pay an appropriate rate to fly a large airplane, you're going to attract and retain more experienced pilots instead of the "your compensation is flight time to move on to Fed Ex"/On-The-Job-Training environment at many regionals and some majors.

Additonally, everyone's hair was on fire about "OMG! OMG! How fast is the upgrade at XYZ? OMG! OMG!" without actually wondering "Dang, am I even going to have the realistic amount of experience to even upgrade to captain if it comes that quickly?"

We hold a lot of blame too. It's easy to point our fingers at Colgan's training philosophy, corporate culture and especially the sausage grinder that the regionals (and yes, some majors) are, but we've got to look in the mirror as well.
 
No doubt the crash was caused by pilot error. Underlying causes are another thing, and I would differ. But that wasn't my point in revisiting this.

What I find interesting is that Feith basically came out and said compensation and work rules were a factor. I am curious if the NTSB would make a recommendation on crew pay and work rules, or if Greg Feith is now (after retiring from NTSB) just speaking his opinion free of the fetters of his gubmint service. The NTSB makes a lot of recommendation that the FAA may or may not heed.
 
If stupid people are at the helm its a product of the training department letting people through that shouldn't be there (I am a testament to that fact!). Fail or fire people who suck and the market will take care of wages. If the training department can't find enough people to pass the company will do what any normal company in a free market will do - raise wages to staff their expensive multi-million dollar paperweights.

If more commuter pilots crash and kill people passengers won't be flying on them any more and the free market will again take over and the commuters will all but disappear.

We have enough Government intervention already.
 
Did anyone else notice that on the CVR's for both of the recent regional jet accidents (this one and KLEX) the crews were talking about where they'd rather be flying when the accident occurred. Just thought it was interesting.
 
Just a comment!
In Europe young guys (19-20 years old) get jobs flying Airbuses and Boeings with 200 hours Total. You guys who talk about experience and complaint about airlines who hire low time pilots, TELL me how many accidents were in Europe for the last 20 years and what caused them. I dont think having a 250 hour FO in my flight i would worry because if he wasnt safe enough, he/she wouldnt be sitting there.
Overall we have to understand that everybody goes through the same training and the same standards. I understand that everything has to do with experience but i also know that in order to get the experience you have to start from somewhere. Thats why next to the FO is the Captain with thousands of hours. And im a 100% sure that the people who beleive that airlines shouldnt hire low time pilots IF they had the chance to get a job when they had 200 hours, they would do it like everybody else.
And by the way, im not a low time pilot, i never worked for an airline and i will never do.
 
cypilot77 said:
Just a comment!
In Europe young guys (19-20 years old) get jobs flying Airbuses and Boeings with 200 hours Total. You guys who talk about experience and complaint about airlines who hire low time pilots, TELL me how many accidents were in Europe for the last 20 years and what caused them. I dont think having a 250 hour FO in my flight i would worry because if he wasnt safe enough, he/she wouldnt be sitting there.
Overall we have to understand that everybody goes through the same training and the same standards. I understand that everything has to do with experience but i also know that in order to get the experience you have to start from somewhere. Thats why next to the FO is the Captain with thousands of hours. And im a 100% sure that the people who beleive that airlines shouldnt hire low time pilots IF they had the chance to get a job when they had 200 hours, they would do it like everybody else.
And by the way, im not a low time pilot, i never worked for an airline and i will never do.
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Well if you repeatedly fail training programs and the company continually pushes you through....well thats a big problem in my opinion. Thats the difference between the airline pilot in those European countries and our 121 pilots. The company's training program is the last line of defense in weeding out the ones that shouldn't be there. But when it's all about the bottom line (money), well you get accidents like this one.

It's crazy that my current employer has more stringent training and fail policies than some 121 carriers do. Getting shown the door is quite normal during training and out on line. They don't want the liability.
 
cypilot77 said:
You guys who talk about experience and complaint about airlines who hire low time pilots, TELL me how many accidents were in Europe for the last 20 years and what caused them. I dont think having a 250 hour FO in my flight i would worry because if he wasnt safe enough, he/she wouldnt be sitting there.
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Or it is just cheaper for the airlines to continue doing what they are doing and pay out life insurance payouts every few years when a plane does crash.

Also, you can't compare the training in Europe to the training in the states. It really isn't THAT hard to get a commercial certificate, especially if you have the money to keep plugging away at it if you have problems. Getting a JAA license is a whole different ball of wax.
 
European cadet programs are worlds apart from anything equivalent in the US.

There's a lot litany of screening they do on candidates before they even get into a basic Frasca simulator. For a period of time, in the US, you could more or less drop out of high school with 0 hours and within a couple of years be a regional captain.

We have zero aptitude testing required by the FAA. The CAA is much different. Hell, my airline does (did?) aptitude testing and required a four-year degree and you should have heard people caterwauling about people who didn't have a degree or pass the tests. Unfair! Unjust! How DARE they!

I should get off my lazy ass and talk to someone about the Lufthansa cadet program to show just what goes on over there from "Zero to Hero".
 
Matt13C said:
The fact that she didnt make enough to live in base can easily be handled without raising pilots pay a penny, the airline can simply provide a cheap hotel room or a crash pad for pilots who dont live in base and require you be there 8 hours early. Or, make it so you MUST live in base.
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My Company does just that. They provide you with a company paid hotel room or space in one of the company owned condos.

cypilot77 said:
Just a comment!
In Europe young guys (19-20 years old) get jobs flying Airbuses and Boeings with 200 hours Total. You guys who talk about experience and complaint about airlines who hire low time pilots, TELL me how many accidents were in Europe for the last 20 years and what caused them. I dont think having a 250 hour FO in my flight i would worry because if he wasnt safe enough, he/she wouldnt be sitting there.
Overall we have to understand that everybody goes through the same training and the same standards. I understand that everything has to do with experience but i also know that in order to get the experience you have to start from somewhere. Thats why next to the FO is the Captain with thousands of hours. And im a 100% sure that the people who beleive that airlines shouldnt hire low time pilots IF they had the chance to get a job when they had 200 hours, they would do it like everybody else.
And by the way, im not a low time pilot, i never worked for an airline and i will never do.
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I am have seen first hand the British Ab Initio programs and they are light years ahead of US training. First you already have to have college degree to apply for the job, then take a battery of entrance exams. After that their ground schools are very thorough and cover much more that the FAA's. The cadets also have to keep a very high GPA in class room studies and continually show advancement in the flight portions. If the GPA drops or they stop advancing they are terminated from the program.

I am still not crazy about 300 hr FO's in the right seat but they do have significantly more training and are supervised by senior, high time captains and they will not see the left seat for many years and a few thousand hours.

The problem with Ab Initio and the US pay to play schools is experience. You just can't buy experience. I went to the reigionals with approximately 2500 TT with the majority of my experience in 135 cargo. I know when I had 300 hours I was not ready to pilot an airliner. At 300 hours a pilot just hasn't gained enough experience period.

I personally would like to see the FAA mandate that any pilot at the controls of 121 airliner must have an ATP.
 
The same people on here that seem to think that putting a lower experienced captain in the left seat have no problems saying how great it is for instructors to go throw themselves into hard IFR alone at night in all weather flying 135 freight. What's the difference here? Just because there are people on board the pilots should have more experience? In my opinion this wasn't necessarily an experience issue... this was a complacency issue between two competent and qualified pilots. The pilot's in the 135 world (my world) are forced to learn alone about icing, thunderstorms, emergencies, and everything else you can possibly have come up in the world of flying... and they do it safely on a nightly basis and have been doing this for years. Not to be overly critical here... but these pilots just ignored flying 101, and I highly doubt it was a training issue. I'm pretty sure that lesson 1 or 2 in my private days I was taught if it doesn't have enough airspeed, it won't fly... pretty simple notion really. Icing... well, you have to learn sometime. Even if these 2 didn't have the 'experience' of some crews... realize that a lot of people out there have their first exposure to icing of any kind alone (I did). And, provided the airplane is capable, make it through unscathed (and happy to be on the ground). It's a bad deal, and it could happen to any of us, but I really don't think we should over analyze pilots experience levels... especially when the captain had to have at least 1500 hours total time and pilots with less are out there flying in the same if not worse weather.
 
Murdoughnut said:
Did anyone else notice that on the CVR's for both of the recent regional jet accidents (this one and KLEX) the crews were talking about where they'd rather be flying when the accident occurred. Just thought it was interesting.
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Yes I did, right off the bat.
 
There's no comparison between the European JAA licenses and the FAA licenses. With the JAA at 250 hrs you have a throughly trained pilot that is ready for airline line operations. At 250 hrs FAA most pilots are not even close to ready to be in an airliner. Over at PPrune the foreign pilots refer to the FAA licenses as a "sham" license.

Personally, I believe the outdated FAA training system should be scraped and a new training program built from the ground up heavily based on the JAA. That would be an excellent start and improving the quality of pilots.
 
I'm gonna have to call BS on saying that JAA at 250 is a superior pilot to FAA guys at 250. Book knowledge a pilot does not make. Besides. Look at all the JAA guys that are coming to the US for their training. Are they getting a better initial training in south Florida vs the other guys buzzing around? I doubt it. Sure their written exams are more numerous and in depth but they do the same thing we do. They buy books, learn some of the stuff and the rest they memorize. Its a matter of how motivated a person is to learn. Just because they may take some tests if they're involved in a cadet program doesn't mean a whole lot. Just like here, some never make it. Is that to say that they're better. No. Look at the volume of traffic vs. the accident rate. The US aviation system is the safest in the world. Why are downing ourselves to the Europeans?
I'll go head to head any day with a European in the cockpit.
 
gomntwins said:
The same people on here that seem to think that putting a lower experienced captain in the left seat have no problems saying how great it is for instructors to go throw themselves into hard IFR alone at night in all weather flying 135 freight. What's the difference here? Just because there are people on board the pilots should have more experience? In my opinion this wasn't necessarily an experience issue... this was a complacency issue between two competent and qualified pilots. The pilot's in the 135 world (my world) are forced to learn alone about icing, thunderstorms, emergencies, and everything else you can possibly have come up in the world of flying... and they do it safely on a nightly basis and have been doing this for years. Not to be overly critical here... but these pilots just ignored flying 101, and I highly doubt it was a training issue. I'm pretty sure that lesson 1 or 2 in my private days I was taught if it doesn't have enough airspeed, it won't fly... pretty simple notion really. Icing... well, you have to learn sometime. Even if these 2 didn't have the 'experience' of some crews... realize that a lot of people out there have their first exposure to icing of any kind alone (I did). And, provided the airplane is capable, make it through unscathed (and happy to be on the ground). It's a bad deal, and it could happen to any of us, but I really don't think we should over analyze pilots experience levels... especially when the captain had to have at least 1500 hours total time and pilots with less are out there flying in the same if not worse weather.
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I agree with you. I started flying 135 right at 1200 TT. Did my training and out the door I went by myself.

Pay is not a direct cause. If you accept a job at McD's do you still have to show up to work and accomplish tasks? Yes or you will be fired. What if you don't like how much they pay? Don't apply or work there. If you have to commute SEA-EWR during the biggest hiring boom in regional aviation for one of the lowest paying carriers maybe you need to look in the mirror?

Does Colgan contract their Q training to Flight Safety?
 
The 250 hour Europeans that make it to a 121 cockpit are most likely pretty sharp people. I had a few students that were really sharp. They excelled in everything they did. I have no doubt that when they stepped into a 121 cockpit at 250 hours they were an asset.
 
Trip7 said:
There's no comparison between the European JAA licenses and the FAA licenses. With the JAA at 250 hrs you have a throughly trained pilot that is ready for airline line operations. At 250 hrs FAA most pilots are not even close to ready to be in an airliner. Over at PPrune the foreign pilots refer to the FAA licenses as a "sham" license.

Personally, I believe the outdated FAA training system should be scraped and a new training program built from the ground up heavily based on the JAA. That would be an excellent start and improving the quality of pilots.
Click to expand...
You have to remember that PPRUNE is largely European and there is a lot of elitism, nay snobbery in european aviation. The big thing about the jaa ticket is that it is a real pain in the neck to get, in fact there are a lot of hoops just to perpetuate the elitism.
I have friend at my airline that use to be a chief pilot at a Florida flight school training JAA and FAA students. He is British, and thinks the JAA system is pure crap...

I briefly taught the JAA ATPL ground school curriculum, mostly Navigation (the hardest part). The amount of detail in that curriculum exceeded the theoretical knowledge required when I went through undergraduate Navigator training. It is common knowledge that the JAA curriculum is largely based on stuff 50 yrs ago. Try systems, do you really need to know about wood and fabric aircraft construction at a detailed level to be an effective airline pilot?
The students just went through the feedback gouge (kinda sorta like a gleim) and learned enough to pass the tests.
While I personally think the FAA theorectical could be a little more stringent, whatever could be gleaned from the JAA curriculum is usually lost in all the minutia.
It is all about elitism, right of passage and snobbery.
 
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