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| 11/23 |
| 2009/5/13-20 [Transportation/Airplane] UID:52992 Activity:nil |
5/13 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090513/ap_on_go_ot/us_plane_into_home "Airline officials acknowledged at the hearing that Shaw, 24, was paid at a rate of about $23 an hour. Colgan officials said their captains typically have salaries around $55,000 a year." 1. Someone as young as 24 can be a co-pilot of a commercial jet? 2. I thought commercial jet pilots typically make six figures. \_ That was the old era, new pilots make much less. \- while true, airline pilots have a steep seniority system. there are a number of WOB pages about this. so you cant generalize any more about pilot salaries than you can about college teacher salaries ... going from say a full prof at the 'fraud to a contract "english 1a" teacher at a community college. \_ WOB? In any case, new pilots will never make the peak salaries that senior pilots make today, they have changed the whole pay structure industrywide. \_ http://tinyurl.com/pw9yhk NYT article about airline pilot pay and working conditions. |
| 11/23 |
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| news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090513/ap_on_go_ot/us_plane_into_home Barack Obama By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press Writer Joan Lowy, Associated Press Writer - Wed May 13, 6:05 pm ET WASHINGTON - The co-pilot in an airline crash that killed 50 people in upstate New York was paid a salary so low that she lived with her parents near Seattle and commuted across the country to her job, a combination of long travel and little money that a safety official called a "recipe for an accident." The second day of a three-day National Transportation Safety Board hearing Wednesday focused on whether Captain Marvin Renslow and co-pilot Rebecca Shaw were fatigued on the wintry night of Feb. The Bombardier Dash 8-Q400, a twin-engine turboprop, experienced an aerodynamic stall, rolling back and forth before plunging into a house below. All 49 people aboard and one on the ground were killed in the worst US air crash in seven years. Board member Kitty Higgins said fatigue has been a factor in other crashes and is a major concern for the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration. "When you put together the commuting patterns, the pay levels, the fact that the crew rooms aren't supposed to be used (for sleeping) but are being used -- I think it's a recipe for an accident, and that's what we have here," Higgins said. Colgan pays its beginning first officers $21 an hour, which means she would have earned $16,254 that year, although she could have earned more if she worked more hours, said Roger Cox, an NTSB aviation safety expert. In questioning Colgan officials, Cox suggested that Shaw was commuting from her home near Seattle because she couldn't afford to live in the New York metropolitan area on her salary. Colgan spokesman Joe Williams declined to disclose Shaw's salary, but said the airline's starting first officers typically earn around $24,000. The night before the accident, Shaw flew overnight as a passenger from Seattle, changing planes in Memphis, to report to work at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. She also complained about congestion and may have been suffering from a cold. Renslow, 47, commuted to Newark from his home near Tampa, Fla. It is unclear where Renslow, who was in the middle of a two-day assignment, slept the night before the trip, but he logged into a computer from Colgan's crew room in Newark at 3 am the night before, according to NTSB documents. Colgan officials said their captains typically earn around $55,000 a year. Neither pilot had a "crash pad" or apartment they shared with other pilots in the New York area, nor did they rent a hotel room, NTSB documents said. NTSB investigators said 93 of the 137 Colgan pilots who worked out of Newark at the time of the accident were commuting from far away. The company's crew room at the airport is equipped with couches and a big screen TV. Board members said Shaw frequently slept overnight in the crew room in violation of company policy, joking with other crew members that the room had a couch with her name on it. Mary Finnegan, Colgan's vice president of administration, said the company permits pilots to live anywhere in the country they wish. She said the company also allows them to remove themselves from flight duty if they are fatigued. "It is their responsibility to commute in and be fit for duty," Finnegan said. Colgan officials said overnight sleeping wasn't allowed in the crew room because it was a busy place, making quality rest time difficult. Daniel Morgan, Colgan's vice president for flight safety, said the airline industry has a long history of flight crews commuting long distances to report for work. Morgan said it is appropriate that the airline sometimes schedule pilots to be on duty up to 16 hours at a stretch with a maximum of eight hours of flight time. "It's not an ideal way to work, but neither is working overnight in the post office," Morgan said. Paul Rice, vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association, said airlines -- especially regional airlines, where salaries for less senior pilots are lower -- have "defaulted to a position that pilots will commute." "People can't go live in these major cities, or even in the suburbs of these major cities, at $16,000 to $17,000 a year," Rice said. A cockpit voice recorder transcript shows Renslow and Shaw engaging in chitchat about careers and her lack of experience flying in icy conditions during the plane's final minutes, even after they had noticed a buildup of ice on the windshield and wings. Colgan officials acknowledged in response to board members' questions Tuesday that Renslow and Shaw weren't paying close attention to the plane's instruments and were surprised by a stall warning. Nor did they follow the airline's procedures for responding to a stall. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. |
| tinyurl.com/pw9yhk -> www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/nyregion/17pilot.html?_r=3&sq=airline%20pilot&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=1&adxnnlx=1242633661-L+h35AqCGPW7gMUbf6HpVw Continental Flight 3407 Rick Friedman for The New York Times Alex Lapointe, a co-pilot for a regional carrier, says he often flies on too little sleep. Alex Lapointe, a 25-year-old co-pilot for a regional airline, says he routinely lifts off knowing he has gotten less sleep than he needs. And once or twice a week, he says, he sees the captain next to him struggling to stay alert. Neil A Weston, also 25, went $100,000 into debt to train for a co-pilot's job that pays him $25,000 annually. He carries sandwiches in a cooler from his home in Dubuque, Iowa, bought his first uniform for $400, and holds out hope of tripling his salary by moving into the captain's seat, then up to a major carrier. Paul Nietz, 58, who recently retired from a regional airline, said his schedule wore him down and cost him three marriages. His workweek typically began with a 2:30 am wake-up in northern Michigan and a 6 am flight to his Chicago home bases. There, he would wait for his first assignment, a noon departure. By the time he parked his aircraft at the last gate of the night, he was exhausted. But he would be due back at work eight hours and 15 minutes later. "At the very most, if you're the kind of person that could walk into a hotel room, strip and lay down, you might get four and a half hours of sleep," he said. Continental Connection Flight 3407 outside Buffalo has highlighted the operations of the nation's regional airlines, a sector of the aviation industry that has grown to account for half the country's airline flights and a quarter of its passengers. The details of that world have surprised many Americans -- the strikingly low pay for new pilots; the rigors of flying multiple flights, at lower altitudes and thus often in worse weather than pilots on longer routes, while scrambling to get enough sleep; the relative inexperience of pilots at the smaller airlines, whose training standards are the same, but whose skills may not be. In hearings last week in Washington, witnesses and safety officials raised questions of whether the crew of the plane that crashed, killing all 49 people on board and one on the ground, had been adequately vetted and whether they might have been hampered by, among other factors, fatigue. But regardless of whether training, fatigue or the cost-cutting that has hit the entire industry are ultimately determined to have contributed to the crash of Flight 3407, interviews with current and former regional pilots make vividly clear the daily challenges they face. Peek inside a crew lounge at midnight in Chicago, and one could easily find every recliner occupied by an off-duty aviator trying to sleep despite the whine of a janitor's vacuum cleaner. Craigslist for the term "crash pad" will turn up listings for rooms for rent, often for $200 a month or less, a short drive from an airport, where a dozen or more pilots, unable to afford hotels, may come and go, barely letting the mattresses cool. But many regional pilots, paid entry-level wages that are sometimes no better than a job at McDonald's, can not afford even a crash pad. Like the two Flight 3407 pilots, who caught free rides on planes from Florida and Seattle to their flight from Newark to Buffalo, pilots at regional airlines routinely hopscotch across thousands of miles to get to work. Some live with their parents, as the plane's first officer, Rebecca L Shaw, did. Others, like Mr Lapointe, live near former bases of operations that were shut down because an employer went out of business or a route was dropped. For Captain Nietz, a 27-year veteran, the biggest indignity was flying hungry. Delays were so routine that he seldom left his plane all day long, even "to grab a biscuit." With food service long discontinued, he said, the only bites to be had were "the occasional peanut -- and the airlines charge the crews for bags of peanuts and cheese and crackers." |