Regional Airline Operating Practices

As a result of high-visibility air crashes involv­ing regional airlines, regional airlines staffing and operating practices have recently come under renewed and intensive review. While regional air­lines fly one out of four airline passengers today, they usually do so under the brand of the mainline carrier that conducts the majority of the flight seg­ments. Many, if not most, of the passengers who board the regional carrier aircraft will not be aware that the mainline carrier is not operating the air­craft that they are boarding. They will not realize that pilot hiring requirements, pilot flight experi­ence, pilot training procedures, and pilot pay scales will be very different from mainline carriers, even though the same FAA requirements apply to both types of carriers.18 Regional pilots are paid much less than their counterparts in the mainline carriers, sometimes even less than TSA screeners.

There were six fatal domestic airline acci­dents between 2003 and 2009, all involving regional airlines.19

• Jan. 8, 2003: Air Midwest flight 5481, flying as US Airways Express, crashed in Charlotte, N. C., killing 21. The NTSB investigation cites deficiencies in Air Midwest’s oversight of outsourced maintenance as a contributing cause.

• Oct. 14, 2004: Pinnacle Airlines flight 3701, operating under a code share as Northwest Airlink, crashed in Jefferson City, MO, kill­ing two crew members who were reposition­ing the plane to another airport after routine maintenance. The NTSB cites poor airman­ship, unprofessional behavior, and deviation from standard operating procedures as prob­able causes.

• Oct. 19, 2004: Corporate Airlines flight 5966 crashed in Kirksville, MO, killing 13. NTSB investigators cite pilots’ failure to follow established procedures as a probable cause and pilot fatigue as a contributing cause.

• Dec. 19, 2005: A seaplane, operated by Fly­ing Boat Inc., but flying as Chalks Ocean

Airways flight 101, crashed in Miami, kill­ing 20. The NTSB cites Chalks’ inadequate maintenance program and the FAA’s failed oversight of the airline as probable causes.

• Aug. 27, 2006: Comair flight 5191, operat­ing under a code share as Delta Connection, crashed in Lexington, KY, killing 47 passen­gers and 2 crew members. One crew member survives. The final NTSB report cites pilot performance as the probable cause and non­relevant conversation by crews as a contrib­uting cause.

• Feb. 12, 2009: Continental flight 3407, a Col – gan Air-operated plane flying under a code share as Continental Connection, crashed out­side of Buffalo, N. Y., killing all 49 on board and 1 on the ground. NTSB cites the captain’s inappropriate response to a stall, unprofes­sional pilot behavior, and Colgan Air’s inade­quate procedures for flying in icing conditions as probable causes.

The last accident, Colgan Air flight 3407, was highly publicized in the news media and in aviation circles. The issues raised by this event concerned the adequacy of entry-level flight qualifications of pilots, the airline’s training stan­dards for all pilots, the acceptable level and qual­ity of crew rest, and pilots’ pay levels. The first officer of flight 3407, for instance, was paid a salary of $16,000 per year, lived with her parents in Seattle, Washington, and commuted to her home base at Newark by overnight deadhead­ing, at least partially due to financial constraints. It was said that she also had a part-time job in a coffee shop.

The airplane flown by Colgan Air was painted in Continental’s livery, including Conti­nental’s trademark globe on the tail, and only the fine print on the ticket gave any indication that this was not a Continental operation.

In February 2012, the FAA proposed to sub­stantially increase the qualification requirements for first officers consistent with a mandate in the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administra­tion Extension Act of 2010. The proposed rule is entitled “Pilot Certification and Qualification Requirements for Air Carrier Operations.” Among other things, this proposal would require an Air­line Transport Rating for first officers, completion of a new FAA-approved program for the ATP cer­tificate with enhanced training requirements, but contain allowances for reduced minimum flight time to qualify for the ATP rating under certain circumstances, including military training or a four-year baccalaureate degree program.

This rule seems to have stirred some contro­versy, with even the former FAA administrator Randy Babbitt on record as saying he does not think this is the best solution to the problem, cit­ing overall safety statistics. It must also be rec­ognized that the kind of flying that the regionals have to perform is not comparable with that of the mainline carriers. Regionals perform many more takeoffs and landings, thus more instru­ment approaches in IMC, fly at lower altitudes, use shorter and narrower runways at outlying air­ports, and often fly turboprop equipment.

Overall, according to the NTSB, from 2000 to 2009, it was more than twice as safe to fly as it was in the preceding decade, and more than seven times safer than in the 1970s. While these are impressive and reassuring statistics, unan­swered questions implicit in the foregoing illus­trations of regional practices remain.