Last week we watched the PBS documentary "Flying Cheap". The special aired in 2010 and examined the Buffalo Colgan accident and the regional airlines as a whole. The documentary demonstrates a slight bias towards promoting its own investigation and attempting to be a whistle-blower but this journalistic vigor can be excused. PBS is merely embracing their role. "It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell." as the great journalist Wilbur Storey would say. Frontline strays into the latter more than a few times though they generally are conveying the facts.
If you do not have time to watch the documentary or are not familiar with the Buffalo accident or the regional airline system I will give you a summary now. In early 2009 a Continental Connection Bombardier turboprop aircraft operating as Colgan Air 3407 entered a stall on final approach to Buffalo and crashed mere miles away from the airport killing 50 people (one on the ground). The aircraft had no mechanical problems and the weather was normal. According to National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators the probable cause of the accident was "inappropriate inputs" by the captain and possible fatigue. The families of the victims were outraged that the aircraft was not being operated by Continental. The tickets of the flight were advertised as a Continental flight with fine print indicating that it would be operated by Colgan Air. The flying public was generally unaware of the existence of regional airlines and their lower safety standards in doing business with the majors. As you may have observed if you have ever taken an airline flight the major airlines generally operate out of massive airports located on the outskirts of most major cities. The economic motive is clear: higher populations equal higher costumer bases. This business model naturally created many major "Hub" airports. These airports high amounts of use by the airlines lend itself to efficiency and safety by allowing airlines and airports to invest resources into few physical areas. The downside of this top heavy system is that medium to small sized cities are either unable to take large airline jets in their facilities or the airlines are unwilling to offer routes to those cities due to lack of profitability. In the past some airlines have tried to reach these small market cities by purchasing their own fleet of short range aircraft that can easily operate in smaller airports but with different aircraft comes different air & ground crews that need to be trained and paid. Airline profit margins are normally small and many airlines that attempted to maintain their own small fleets found it unsustainable, forcing some into bankruptcy. The major airlines needed a solution to serve these smaller markets and that solution was the regional airlines. These small airlines (such as Colgan) have only small to medium aircraft and an intimate knowledge of their local areas. The major's offered these smaller operations contracts to fly their customer's short flight legs to small destinations. The regional in turn would cease to be independent and become a vassal to their parent company while still controlling their own operation. It was a win-win situation: The majors could now fly to the smaller cities without the overhead of owning and operating their own small fleet while the regionals would have much more stable business thus gaining competitive advantage over their competitors and increasing growth/profits without the danger of competing with the major airlines. The regionals also had the luxury of less scrutiny from the FAA being small and vary numerous. The system worked well (and continues to work well) for a long time. With the lack of new ex-military pilots to fill airline cockpits the regionals recruiting from civilian/university flight schools basically became a farm system for pilots to the airlines. Newly trained and unproven civilian pilots with large debts from paying their own training were numerous and desperate for jobs. This allowed the regionals to lower wages to increase profits. The profits of this system increased its popularity to the point where regional airlines fly more than 50% of all domestic flights in the U.S. today. The Buffalo accident showed the inherent design flaws of a system that rewards business for cutting costs as much as possible with the pilots being overworked, underpaid, and under-trained as well as the airline (Colgan) being overaggressive, under-regulated, and short-staffed all while its parent company (Continental) remained content to pass the buck on responsibility.
To be clear, pilot pay upon first entering the industry is bad but it is not a surprise to new pilots. Everyone expects to be paid less than 20 thousand even down to 15 thousand in some places but in reality money is not the currency new pilots are being paid in. They are being paid in experience that they can cash in at their next job. The Career path of a modern pilot involves jumping from regional to regional gaining experience, pay, and quality of life along the way until one has accumulated enough experience to be considered for the major airlines (Whose pay, while reduced in recent years, is still substantial). That being said many passengers would be concerned to know that one of the two pilots responsible for their safety is being paid roughly equal to employees at McDonalds. Cockpit voice recorder data from the Colgan crash clearly shows how the first officer (F/O) is suffering from an illness. She says how she would have taken a sick day upon arriving to work but she could not afford to get a hotel for the night. She commuted from Washington State to New Jersey the night before. She also lived that far away from her home base to live for free with her family. The Captain engages the first officer at length on his future career prospects. His dissatisfaction in working for Colgan clearly negatively affects his situational-awareness and that of his first officer. While it's fair to say that no one expects quality wages being at the bottom of the totem pole it is in the interest of everyone for the regional to stop taking advantage of fresh graduates and supply living wages. If they refuse to do so they will be forced to Drop routes that are profitable as more and more American pilots take high paying jobs overseas to pay for school.
This brings me to the seemingly always impending pilot shortage. Many have argued (Even in my last link) that there is in fact no shortage of qualified pilots only a lack of pilots willing to work for low wages. This may be true for older pilots who for whatever reason left the industry when they were young for different careers and now wish to return but cannot due to family/financial obligations, but as I have noted with the overall decrease in wages in recent years the pilots working these days not only will work for low wages, they need to. I also previously noted that the pilot training pipeline from the military has massively decreased with the dawn of less numerous & more advanced "fourth generation" & soon "fifth generation" fighter and bomber aircraft that reduce the military's need for pilots. That pipeline drying up helped spur the creation of civilian-to-airline flight schools such as my own school, Schools that only popped up in the mid 90's to early 00's (01 for EMU). Historically the only civilian training was for private pilot certificates out of random country airports. Now I will have gone from zero hours to flight instructor in a class delta towered airport that only retains its tower to support my flight school. These schools were created to fill the military pipeline shortage. Now there is a shortage of people willing to go to civilian schools as well; people are unwilling to burden themselves with six figure debt for a career that has remarkably mediocre lifetime wages compared to other industries unless they truly do it for the love of aviation. When I was a Freshman I realized that there were two types of people in the program: People who thought it was too expensive and people so enamored with flight that they didn't care. Guess who are the only ones who graduate or even go past private pilot? For the record there are places that offer decent starting pay for new pilots, they are called overseas & my career choice the military. Even those two are having trouble attracting pilots. The Air Force (AF) recently offered veteran pilots Signing bonuses of nearly a quarter of a million dollars and few of them even took it. Why? Due to the sequester military pilots hardly fly anymore. Again, pilots are not generally motivated by money, they are motivated by flying. That is why regionals and major airlines could cut pay in the first place without major repercussions. Pilot's stayed for the love of flying. We are still in the early days of the shortage(See graphs below) (The AF only made that offer to experienced veteran pilots) but my Navy officer recruiter has 20 pilot slots a year to give out and last year he only filled 11 of them. That why overseas is offering extremely high wages and that's why some companies are now hiring pilots with DUI's on their records. Not because they want to but because they have to. Vary soon anyone with a license and a pulse will be able to get an entry level job at regionals and cargo operations. The majors will always have the people but that is because they can pull from the farm (Much like pro & minor league sports teams) of the regionals. For that reason the regional airline system will face major challenges in the coming decade as more and more leave them and less and less show up to replace them.
The major regulation that came out of the Buffalo accident will only exacerbate the situation. The rule requires new airline transport pilots (ATP) to have at least 1500 flight hours before they can work for an airliner. This rule solves a problem that did not exist. The F/O while being unprofessional over the course of the flight and improperly reacting during the stall was not flying the aircraft, the captain was. The captain had close to 3000 hours but due to lack of training & basic airmanship crashed the aircraft. That pilot was able to be hired (after returning from working in the IT industry for the record) because Colagan was rapidly expanding and needed the pilots. That was five years ago when the shortage was a rumor. Forcing new pilots to get to 1500 hours will not make them any safer due to the fact that those hours will be two or three more years of flight training other students (making less than 15k) not flying the aircraft, not learning anything new, and not leaving the home airport. This increased limit will increase the investment, shrink the pipeline, and lead to more and more bad pilots like the Colagan captain flying for desperate regionals. This rule will only be repealed when the major's realize that it is going to destroy the regional system (or degrade safety) and that won't happen until it starts to happen in mass. I for one give it a few years until some regionals start to run out of business or more blood is spilled.
Feel free to comment.
-Neuvirth, Senior, Eastern Michigan University
