Regulating Flying Hours

Recently, I watched the Frontline story called “Flying Cheap”. The PBS documentary details the tragic case of the Colgan Air Flight 3407 crash on February 12, 2009. Everyone on board was killed. The main point the documentary was trying to make was how regional airliners aren’t as safe as commercial airliners. The documentary also describes the atmosphere at Colgan Air when it came to safety. Regional airliners have contracts with major airliners and some like Colgan Air are paid for every flight that they complete. This arrangement can lead to some perverse incentives for pilots. I am not a pilot but I would assume flight safety would be the number one priority when it comes to flying. Former Colgan Air pilots were interviewed and described how Colgan was interested in completing flights with very little concern for what condition the pilots were in. One pilot at Colgan Air reported an incident of another pilot trying to fudge the numbers when it came to reporting how many passengers were on board (even though reporting an overweighed plane could increase the chances of disaster) In the crash of Flight 3407 the first officer Rebecca Shaw had commuted a long distance, and was sick the day before the crash. In addition to this it seemed she had little sleep and yawned during the flight. The documentary points how regional pilots have less flying experience than commercial pilots. At Colgan Air some pilots got promotions from First Officer to Captain within 9 months.

Proposed legislation wants to increase the number of hours co-pilots must have from 250 hours to 800 hours. The family members of Flight 3407 wanted co-pilots to have a minimum of 1,500 hours. The proposed legislation would not have stopped this fatal accident considering both the pilot and co-pilot each had over 2,200 hours of flying experience. This legislation will of course of unintended consequences. The legislation did not mention how many hours of flying time captains would be required to have. What if the co-pilots have their required hours but the captain isn’t experienced? Increasing the number of hours is a burdensome cost for people that want to become pilots. From what I understand pilots in training have to pay per hour for flight instruction. This legislation will triple the cost for pilots in training.

Although tragic the cause of Colgan Flight 3407 was the Colgan’s corporate culture and not the number of hours the captain or first officer had. I would imagine less people would be willing to fly Colgan Air after people learn of the company culture. No piece of regulation could ever do this because the market itself is a regulating mechanism. I often wonder why there is not more competition within the airline industry. For instance why is the TSA in charge of security? Why can’t airliners have their own line for security and different airliners could have different standards. Another thing I wonder is why airliners don’t post online which pilots are flying, how much experience the pilots have, and perhaps a customer feedback of passengers that have flown with them before. The airline industry is heavily regulated by the FAA but we must remember that flying statistically is still one of the safest forms of transportation.