USA to modernise regional airline regulation
In January the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) published a comprehensive report titled Answering the Call to Action on Airline Safety and Pilot Training in response to concerns about growing risk surrounding airline travel – particularly on regional carriers’ services.
In a press release that accompanied the report, FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt explained, “The report lays out our initial actions to improve and revise pilot training and to develop an effective pilot fatigue rule. We also share what we have done to begin what must be an ongoing dialogue with airlines and unions to strengthen professionalism in the aviation industry and create mentoring programs for our nation’s pilots. This report is a snapshot of our work, which is by no means finished.”
Many of the concerns spring from the airline employment bubble which has since diminished in the global downturn, but airlines are now recruiting again and the FAA is now determined to stay ahead of the game.
High demand for pilots in times of rapid regional airline growth often leads to the hiring of low-time pilots as the temptation to join larger and higher-paying carriers is too much for their senior pilots. This can potentially hasten promotion of less experienced pilots, with newly trained low-hour captains sometimes taking command of increasingly complex aeroplanes.
Activity on the issue became more focused when on February 12, 2009, a Colgan Air Bombardier Dash-8 Q400 crashed while on approach to Buffalo, New York.
The NTSB said the pilots had failed to notice that their ATR aircraft had descended more steeply because they did not follow procedures and engaged in “unprofessional cockpit banter.” But the board also said the two pilots were probably exhausted; they were completing their sixth flight of the day, had been on duty more than 14 hours and had flown three trips on the previous day.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) public hearing on this accident in May 2009 and subsequent congressional hearings identified many of the major concerns and also actions already taken by airlines, their employees and the FAA on issues such as flight crew fatigue, qualifications and training, scheduling and regulatory oversight, training program quality, peer group experience sharing and labor/management conflicts, including disagreement as to where to draw the line in some cases between industrial relations and operational issues.
Crew fatigue is a key issue for regional airlines, with lower-paid pilots often forced to “commute” for long distances from cheaper accommodation to major airports, and then to cope with regional carriers’ typically tight aircraft scheduling and high pressure short-hop flights in crowded airspace.
The FAA expects soon to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) based on Flight and Duty Time Limitations and Rest Requirements (FDR), newly developed by its Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC), before mid-year.
Also under the microscope are crew training requirements and consistency of safety standards between operators. The FAA has drafted comprehensive guidance for the industry and FAA inspectors on how to review training in the context of a safety management system (SMS); which it plans to publish during February.
The USA’s Regional Airline Association (RAA) has welcomed the release of the report:
“Regional airlines applaud the leadership Administrator Babbitt has taken to further enhance aviation safety,” said RAA President Roger Cohen. “This report confirms the excellent safety record of regional airlines, which are committed to the highest professional standards.
“Regional airlines make more than five million safe departures a year,” Cohen added, “but we agree with Administrator Babbitt that ‘an almost perfect record is not enough”.
Australian regional carriers have similar problems with crew retention which they solve in different ways. Some train their own pilots from the ground up, under a bond that requires them to repay the entire cost of the training – up to about $80,000 – if they leave before a specified period.
