From todays paper. Shocking.

WASHINGTON — The co-pilot in a February airline crash that killed 50 people in upstate New York was paid a salary so low she was living with her parents in Seattle and commuting across the country to her job, according to testimony today.

One of the safety issues that has arisen in the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board's investigation is whether co-pilot Rebecca Shaw and Captain Marvin Renslow may have suffered from fatigue during the accident. Testimony in the three-day hearing, which began Tuesday, indicates Ms. Shaw and Mr. Renslow made several fundamental mistakes as Continental Connection Flight 3407 approached Buffalo Niagara International Airport in wintry weather the night of Feb. 12.

Airline officials acknowledged at the hearing that Ms. Shaw, 24, was paid at a rate of about $23 (U.S.) an hour and had a salary of $16,254, although she could have earned more if she worked extra hours. She previously had a second job working in a coffee shop.

The night before the accident, Ms. Shaw flew overnight as a passenger from Seattle, changing planes in Memphis, to report to work at Newark Liberty International Airport. She also complained about congestion and may have been suffering from a cold.

Roger Cox, NTSB's aviation safety operations group chairman, suggested while questioning officials for Colgan Air Inc. of Manassas, Va., which operated the flight for Continental, that Ms. Shaw was commuting because she couldn't afford to live in the New York metropolitan area.

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,” Ms. Finnegan said.

Mr. Renslow commuted to Newark from his home near Tampa, Fla. Colgan officials said their captains typically have salaries around $55,000 a year.

A transcript of the cockpit voice recorder released Tuesday by the board showed Mr. Renslow and Ms. 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.

The Dash 8-Q400 Bombardier, 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.

Colgan officials acknowledged in response to board members' questions that Mr. Renslow and Ms. 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.

Further testimony and documents also showed that Mr. Renslow had failed several training tests before and after being hired by Colgan in 2005. He had been certified to fly the Dash-8 plane for about three months.

Paul Pryor, Colgan's head of pilot training, acknowledged that Mr. Renslow didn't have any hands-on training on the Dash 8's stick pusher — a key safety system that automatically kicks on in response to a stall — although he had received hands-on stick pusher training on a smaller plane that he previously flew.

The blood curdling scream on the part of the chick co pilot was a nice touch. Definitely what i'm looking for in a pilot.

Overriding the stick shaker despite previous hands on experience? Seems quite clear to me what happened.

Panic. By both of them. With a healthy dose of complacency and incompetence thrown in, just to be sure.

$16K @ $23 per is only ~13.5 hrs per week. I would have sought more hours.

The only problem is that FAA regulations limit the amount of flight hours to 1000 per year. That's $23,000 a year before taxes. Most pilots are paid block in/block out (I'm not familiar with Colgans contract...if they even have one). All of the time you see pilots sitting in an airport, they're making almost nothing, akin to 1.50 an hour or something, as per diem.

A pilot might work 60 hours in a week, but they'll only be credited for 23.5 (or something along those lines)....actual flight time.

Such a pointless terrible tragedy.

Mary Finnegan should be dragged behind a truck. Such a gutless self serving remark- she knows exactly what their pilots and cabin staff go through and could care less about them or the customers.

This is what happens when everyone cries about ticket prices. Companies pay unqualified people poverty wages, give them no training, push them to the limits of exhaustion but everyone is happy because they only paid $99 to get from Akron to Chicago. And people like Mary Finnegan hide behind corporate doublespeak.

Sadly I don't think we're going to see any real changes come out of this.

$23k is not a poverty wage for a part time job. You can make the case they're undepaid, but come on...

As far as blaming the customers, wtf? No customers, no airlines, no pilots.

It's not a part time job..especially if she was commuting from Seattle. This is one thing that the average passenger/armchair pilot just doesn't get.

I came to work last saturday for an easy trip at 940am.. 80 hours later at 4:15pm tuesday I came home for work. That tuesday I got up at 5:30am in a podunk town. Was at an airport or in an airplane from 5:55am till 4:15pm. Operated 5 flights and was compensated for only the 6:13h I was in the air. This was a "good day"

I was not payed if the plane was not rolling or flying.

its not a part time job... last month I spent 252 hours of the month at work.. i just didn't get compensated unless i was flying.(that was a light month.. had 335 hours last month.)

think about going to work for 4 days, living out of a suitcase for 4 days, at a different cheap hotel every night.. getting up at the crack of dawn...eating airport food.. working in a high vibration and high noise environment... for years...

M21sniper: the copilots sex has ZERO to do with this.... all the girls I fly with are top notch.. Its pretty obvious you have nothing to add to this conversation and know nothing about aviation. go away

I paid more to fly to NOLA in 1979 at the age of 16 than I did to fly to DC last month.

You are being far too specific.

Am I reading all this right? Your paid a piss poor wage so that's the reason not to perform. Sorry but I flew my bosses ass around the country for years for nothing. I was not worried about his ass but my own, that's all that mattered to me, what I made didn't matter I guess because it was nothing.

Blow me. :)

Aren't pilots supposed to be cool as cucumbers? Would you call someone that let out a hysterical scream cool, or "top notch?"
I sure as hell wouldn't. Perhaps you just have very low standards.

To any reasonable person, she was HARDLY top notch, she was -by her own words- totally unqualified, and they both panicked. That's "top notch?" Seriously, blah, blah, blah.

And hey, what's your plan Manfred? Crank up your wages so that all the customers take the train (or some other airline) instead, and you all get laid off?

You don't like piloting, you don't like the wages, go be a waitress instead. No one forces you to be a pilot, do they?

Kiss him after he blows me.

And take off that stupid hat already.

Legitimate question:

Why do you do it?

I don't think it had anything to do with pay or hours of work. No one climbs into an aircraft with a death wish. I blame this tragedy on the PIC. He falsified documents that would have most likely have eliminated him from the job. He failed two check rides prior to taking the job but did not disclose this according to news reports. He should have been focused on the aircraft during the approach and not shooting the shlt with the FO.

It's fine and actually a good thing to discuss the weather situation with your fellow cockpit crew as it's happening as long as it pertains to your observation and interpretation of what's happening, or about to happen, and your plan to deal with it. Flying the airplane, for most very seasoned pilots, even in bad weather, is really a fairly simple and routine task.

I can speak for the majority of pilots who work for my airline when I say that they are VERY competent instrument pilots. The men and women I fly with are provided a high a level of automation and use it, but they can - and do - click off the autopilot and hand fly in conditions that would challenge ANY pilot - and they do it with utmost skill, precision, and calmness - leg after leg, day and night, in thunderstorm areas, ice conditions, heavy winds, and blowing snow (sometimes all of them combined). Likewise, the vast majority of pilots I have observed while sitting in other airline jumpseats have been just as impressive in their hand flying skills. Most do as I do and click off the autopilot somewhere near 10,000 feet on the descent and hand fly it in - especially when the weather is bad.

I honestly have only met a few (experienced) pilots in all my years in this business who I thought were less than excellent stick and rudder pilots. Yet there seems to be this idea among other pilots that the pilots of highly automated airplanes are somehow less skilled in the stick-and-rudder and instrument flying disciplines. My eighteen years in the airline business has shown me that this idea is almost totally false.

This crew was inexperienced however, and that fact, combined with the captain's obvious lack of talent in this endeavor (c'mon...FIVE failures?! Why was he still employed there anyway?) led to a senseless and totally preventable accident.

Absolutely true. Non essential banter during a high workload period simply takes the crew's focus away from the job at hand (talking strategically about the weather though is not considered idle chit chat - it IS essential, but that's not what they were doing.)

The taxi driver taking you to the airport is paid more than the FO of the plane taking you to the next city. Screwed up value system.

Dont get all butthurt. I apologise for singling you out.. after all making your grasp of the industry heavily shaded by mass media and really bad 80's movies.



I never said she was top notch. I said all the women I fly with are.
I have not flown with her. In-fact she might be alive if she intervened on the Captians botched stall recovery.
Your inclusion of her sex was a thinly hidden blanket statement about all woman pilots. It is simply not true. She actually had more initial hours then most new-highers. In the CVR transcript it she was expressing that she was glad to experience Ice in copilots position before moving to the captains position. A seat where most pilots experience day to day operations in ice for there first season. A welcome humility to the "cool as a cucumber" guys who think they can handle everything and should be captain already.

I LOVE piloting... that doesn't mean the pay is any better\wages any higher or the schedule any less brutal or that I have to be satisfied with the conditions.
The way the seniority and pay works in this industry you need to take the first job you can when you can(low hours low pay) if you want to beat the rat race to higher pay and better lifestyles.

Lower pay means we dont try as hard? nope.. but you lack the ability to attract the best talent and experience and retain the talent you do create. Flying with excellence breads excellence. I think this was a case of two duds that squeezed through the system and Fate being the hunter put them in the same place were higher skill was needed.

It's simply wrong in my view to pay people who carry this kind of responsibility for the lives of their passengers so little. But I guess that's the free market at work.

I'd be interested to know how flight crew salaries actually impact ticket prices.

But I'd much rather pay a bit more for my flight to know that my pilot is getting a decent wage, and didn't have to live with his/her parents and fly across the country in order to get to work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxywEE1kK6I

please dont bring up tail icing. wasnt a factor. he got to slow, stalled it, did a wrong escape. poor basic airmanship. period.

Wow. That is seriously bad flying.

The signs of an imminent wing stall would also have been much more apparent to a pilot hand-flying the controls. Another reason the autopilot should have never been on, IMHO. Autopilots are nice (if/when they work) but icing and turbulence are two situations that come to mind immediately as to places they should not be used. Ironically the times a person might naively assume they'd be most useful (in relieving crewmember stress/workload) but in those situations, the crew absolutely needs to have DIRECT control of the aircraft (meaning the control surfaces/inputs) and feedback.

If anyone here can provide me with good reason(s) to the contrary, I'd love to hear them. I'm not saying it's impossible they exist, but I'm skeptical. My initial reaction to seeing this is that it was irresponsible to be using the autopilot as a crutch in the way they seemed to be doing.

I wonder if Mr. Hotshot Captain actually had any "hands-on" experience for any of his "600+ hours" in winter/ice flying or whether he'd always used the autopilot for those too and simply gotten lucky up to that point.

I have a real problem with their decision to (mis)use cockpit resources as they apparently did.

No idea how to get numbers for feeder airlines. But you can look up numbers for the majors.

United (UAUA) has 6,400 pilots, trailing 12-month revenue of $19BN, and trailing 12-month operating income (loss) of ($1.9BN).
Hypothetically, if every UAUA pilot received a $50K/yr raise, that's 1.6% of revenue - so ticket prices would have to rise by 1.6%.

Would I pay that? Of course. Domestic airline ticket prices are cheap. Coast to coast for $160 - cripes, you can spend that on cab fare during the trip. Fares could go up 50% and still be reasonable, in my opinion.

But if they couldn't get that 1.6%, then operating loss would be ($2.2BN).

Personally, I wish we could back to the pre-deregulation airline industry. Tickets were more expensive, but airline travel was a better experience. For passengers. I guess for pilots, flight attendants, etc too.

Not really- taxi drivers get robbed and shot all the time, and often have to clean up puke. If anything, those are the dudes that are underpaid.

Honestly Cap'n, i don't do thinly vieled anythings.

If i wanted to make a sexist statement, i'd just do it.

For instance, women make for lousy middle linebackers. See? ;)

I understand your defensiveness though, i hold no grudges Captain.

Fixed, and i agree 100%. With all this.

But Porsche monkey's hat is still stupid. ;)

Not true.. my ex girl friend... wait... uhh... nevermind.. dammit :( ;)

Just make sure to call me out when I post on the next m14 thread.


In turb the autopilot can do a way better job then me at keeping peoples lunches inside them. The aircraft I fly even has a mode for it... to reduce the gain(how aggressive it is at responding). Some new aircraft actually use the control surfaces to effectively damp out and reduce the gust loads.
In most transport category aircraft the controls are hydraulic and what you feel is created by a "pitch feel computer" or "artificial feel unit" so you cant feel ice very well.
Its a safety tool 99% of the time.. infact were not allowed to hand fly over 28,000ft in most of the airspace. Yes. hand flying might have produced secondary clues.. like control pressure of an out of trim condition... might have saved the day here. But think: how many times has automation saved the day by keeping both pilots in the loop for decision making and double checking? you will never know.

Yes. I agree.

Don't worry about it man, i'm a layman, you're an expert, and you gave your opinion. I don't mind getting strafed once in a while, it keeps me on my toes. ;)

Feel free to start a company, hire only the best pilots, advertise yourself as the safest and most professional around, grossly "overpay" your crews, and charge a big premium for it.

Maybe it would even work.

PS: How was airline travel in any way a better experience for passengers pre deregulation?

Personally, I am one of the guys who basically always hand flies approaches, for a number of reasons (I like to do it and it keeps my skills sharp). However, let it be clear that I have all of the confidence in the world for the autopilot in the jet I fly. It can do the job more precisely than any pilot could dream of. It is highly capable in turbulence, btw. In fact, at high altitude, a pilot would be a fool to click it off in heavy turbulence because he stand a greater chance of a high altitude upset by hand flying it - such is the nature of high altitude flight and the capabilities of sophisticated transport category autopilots.

As for icing conditions, defined "severe" icing (or the suspicion of it) requires that the autopilot be turned off, for the reasons you stated. However, in light icing, there is no requirement to turn off the autopilot.

less "trash" in the back
http://www.abc15.com/news/local/story/Family-Southwest-Airlines-kicked-us-off-flight-in/6foXicWwK0a74v8okMhz7g.cspx

I do remember when i was in the military the prices for commercial flights were a hell of a lot higher. Didn't take me long to take up the USAF on it's free MAC flight offer.

Do some research. It ain't a hat. It's stupid, but it it's not a hat.

Worked for Swissair. For a while.

Fair enough - I'll buy that explanation. I still would feel a bit uneasy about trusting an autopilot not to overcontrol the airplane in turbulence though. I'm a bit of an anti-technologist when it comes to things like that. I've been in plenty of turbulence and I know how it feels, what Va is and how to make control inputs in such a way as to be effective but not "jerky" in the way that most of the autopilots with which I'm familiar tend to do. I suspect the new, larger, transport-category aircraft have better, more sophisticated autopilots that perhaps are based on much more complex models of human behaviors, performance limits/parameters and other considerations that make them well-suited for this. But they'd need to gain my trust. Based on the stuff with which I'm familiar first-hand, I trust myself way more than I trust the autopilots in either icing or turbulence. And being a bit obsessive about understanding the things that keep me alive in the air, I have a hard time believing in something blindly that is:

1. Designed by computer programmers (usually the lowest-bid ones, from China or India) and
2. Impossible to truly understand (i.e. it's a "black box" and you really don't know the exact algorithims that occur inside of it, just a basic idea of what kind of output you'll get...)

But like anything else, I suppose I could be convinced. It's certainly not my first reaction to technological stuff though. I like (and trust) things like VORs, NDBs, ILSes, localizers and basic nav/comms because I can understand them to a point where I "get it". I trust them. I fully understand that I ultimately have control over them and what their limitations are. Not so with the enigmatic black boxes including fly-by-wire systems, FADEC, etc.

I have been sitting on my hands for a lot of this discussion.

Guys, you missed the most important part of this captains' (yes, no caps) discussion with his SIC. He basically said that his 1600-ish TOTAL hours were inflated by (inferred) a thou. That he had been 'advised' that it was what he needed to get on at Alaska (where he has a 'bud')... (betcha that bud, if he really exists, is sweating bullets in the Alaska CP's office)..... That means that the SIC's time (ASSuming she didn't 'pencil-whip her time as well) was probably the same or she had even MORE than he had.

Sooooooooooo..... I know I have been with one of these type of idiots in a sim, or even worse, in an airplane. Their 'lack of BTDT' shows pretty quickly, and is ALWAYS followed by a call to my CP (if I wasn't it) and my concerns, and the 'event' that led to those concerns were discussed. Always followed by a review of the application and training records.

In 100% of the cases..... not 99.9, not 76%... 100% of the time, the falsehoods were uncovered with only the barest of checking.

Here's the really funny part. A previous employer CANNOT tell a reference checker officially why someone was let go. CANNOT. The only way is thru the lunch chat, or the good-ole-boy-network. The fact that this guy flunked several previous employment checks does not surprise me. The fact that he was hired and promoted to captain at Colgan/Pinnacle does not surprise me.

There is a not-so-funny similarity to checking social security numbers of employees by employers these days. The check is of the number only.... privacy laws (ACLU) do not allow a name match. So the prospective employee simply has to keep guessing until he gets a good SS# to pass the pre-employment check. An employer CANNOT check legal status by name.

The fact that no one that flew with him ever spoke up DOES surprise me. Maybe it's really that bad out there.

I was lucky; the people I worked for over the years (with the exception of corporate flight management companies) actually DID care about what is going on in the field.

The bad apples were rarely let loose in 50 million dollar jets with high profile clientele in back. It did happen, but their careers were short-lived. Until 9-11. Everything changed after that, even at the best of flight departments. Sorry, but is why I got out of corporate.

Murphy, once again, was at work over upstate New York that night. Two newbies ended up in the same plane together, and the simplest of approaches went wrong. For a really stupid reason.

They got slow.

That's it. Icing was not really a factor. They slowed even below the non-icing stall speed (even slower than the icing stall speed), with the engines at idle, and the props at high RPM/high drag.

Because they forgot that a level off ALWAYS needs additional power to sustain flight.

Then they forgot the training. Even the most basic training. The shaker went off. Then the pusher. They overrode the pusher. Never restored the power.

Then they panicked. Flaps were retracted (exactly wrong, in fact, could not have been more wrong).

Then they screamed.

Then they died.

Oh yeah, 48 other trusting souls died with them.



There are lots of theories about how the SIC was actually running the wind-shear recovery memory items. She ASSumed the pilot was on the same plane. He wasn't. There has been some discussion about the role of icing. If the worst case scenario icing was present, it would not have made the difference here. These pilots died when they levelled off, and got slow, icing or not. Basic airmanship. Autopilots...use em if ya have em. The autopilot didn't kill these guys. I suspect if he had been hand-flying that night, it would have been even worse. The stick-pusher disconnected the autopilot anyway.

The kind of airmanship that was needed that night occurrs with BTDT, or around a thousand hours. Seems neither or them had it.

Swissair had all kinds of problems—but I don't think crew compensation was a big factor.

Their big problem was far their far-flung routes and networks and a small domestic market.

I know what it is, but it's still stupid.

Would the autopilot be controlling the throttle?

Some airplanes are equipped with autothrottles (autopilot for the throttles). This one was not. Usually not seen on turboprops because the power is controlled with a combination of 'throttle' and prop speed controls (referred to earlier as 'condition levers'). Think of the prop speed as a 'transmission' of sorts, it controls how the power developed by the engine is transmittted as thrust. As prop speed increases, is like lower gear in a transmission.

Not in that aircraft, no auto throttles. It's been a long time since I've flown anything with auto throttles but I don't remember the computer having a function to add thrust in a stall situation. Maybe the newer Airbus designs have something along those lines but I don't think so.

Anyone who thinks compensation has nothing to do with the quality of the pilots is suffering from rectal cranial inversion. Not to say that it is a direct correlation because pay does not automatically equal competence. The pilots I know who have been "the best", ie instructors, interviewers, or just great pilots, have all gone to FedEx, UPS, or Southwest. A few have also gone to Alaska or Delta but the best pay and work rules attract the best pilots. Thanks to the realities of proper management your boxes and your cheap seats will have the best up front.