Dec. 30 (Bloomberg) -- On the evening of Dec. 10, 2007, pilot Kenny Edwards got the order to fly a Continental Airlines Inc. commuter flight from Tampa, Florida, to West Palm Beach. He told his dispatch supervisor he wouldn’t do it.

The plane’s collision avoidance system was broken, and a worn seal around the main cabin door made it difficult to maintain air pressurization above 10,000 feet, he told his bosses.

Gulfstream International Airlines Inc., which operated the Continental flight, ordered Edwards to fly the 19-passenger Beechcraft 1900D turboprop plane anyway, Edwards says. He refused. As a result, he was fired.

Edwards filed a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration, bringing into focus the hidden dangers of flying on regional airlines, which account for half of all scheduled passenger flights in the U.S., Bloomberg Markets magazine reported.

In May 2009, the FAA found that Gulfstream had violated multiple regulations; it proposed a $1.3 million fine. Gulfstream is appealing the penalty, which would be the largest ever for a regional, says FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette.

FAA inspectors found that Fort Lauderdale-based Gulfstream put planes in the air even after the company’s own staff had repeatedly reported malfunctions in the aircraft.

Gulfstream crews documented seven times in a month that one turboprop had faulty landing gear; eventually that plane touched down without wheels under its nose, on its belly. Gulfstream also scheduled crew members to work more hours than allowed, according to the FAA.

Automotive Parts

And the airline had installed automotive parts not certified by the FAA for use in airplanes. Edwards, 44, has sued Gulfstream (which isn’t related to business jet manufacturer Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.) under a Florida whistle-blower law, alleging the company retaliated against him by firing him.

“They were trying to force pilots to fly airplanes that weren’t in any condition to fly,’” Edwards says. “They did everything to cut costs, and they seemed to be crossing a line to where it was not safe.”

Edwards’s concerns resonate across the U.S. for millions of people who fly regional airlines every year for business and pleasure. Companies like Gulfstream run the fleets that Delta Air Lines Inc., UAL Corp.’s United Airlines, Continental and most other majors use for commuter flights.

Fatal Crash

Continental Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air Inc., crashed in icy weather on Feb. 12, 2009, outside of Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground.

The plane’s captain had been trained by Gulfstream, which also has an aviation school known as Gulfstream Academy. The pilot and his first officer may have erred in responding to a stall warning by pulling up the nose of the plane rather than pointing it down to increase speed, the National Transportation Safety Board found.

Gulfstream also trained the co-pilot on the last fatal commercial airline flight before the Continental crash. That involved a Delta commuter plane, operated by Comair Inc., which used the wrong runway in Lexington, Kentucky, in August 2006, killing 49 people.

Gulfstream also previously employed the two pilots who crashed a Pinnacle Airlines Inc. plane with no passengers after deciding to fly at their jet’s maximum altitude to have fun, the NTSB found. They crashed and died in Jefferson City, Missouri, in October 2004. The first officer attended Gulfstream Academy, according to the NTSB.

A Coincidence

Gulfstream Chief Executive Officer David Hackett says it’s just a coincidence that the crashes were piloted by graduates from the company’s academy.

“The analogy we like to use is: You’re 25 years old; you had a car accident; who taught you to drive at 16?” Hackett says.

Pilots for regionals are often less experienced than those who fly for the majors and are forced to work more-grueling schedules, says U.S. Senator Mark Begich, a Democrat from Alaska who sits on the Aviation Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee.

Regional companies handled more than 158 million passengers in 2008, according to the Washington-based Regional Airline Association. Regional flights usually bear the names of their major airline partners.

Five Crashes

That leaves many passengers unaware that the planes they fly on -- and the pilots who command them -- may not match the safety standards of the airline whose name they see on their tickets, Begich says.

The last five fatal crashes of commercial passenger carriers in the U.S. involved planes operated by regional airlines, according to the NTSB.

Major airlines contract out to regionals to lower their expenses by getting around union agreements, says Captain Paul Rice, first vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association, the world’s largest pilot union, with about 53,000 members.

“The way the industry is structured is that management will go out and find a new airline and start siphoning off the business to whoever will fly for cheaper,” says Rice, 52, a pilot at United for 23 years.

“The American public is only just starting to wake up to that,” Rice says. “What they are buying is the lowest-cost operation that’s available.”

Guaranteed Cockpit Time

Pilots, mechanics and crew schedulers say Gulfstream International doesn’t want to hear complaints about safety. Founded in 1988 as a charter airline, Gulfstream now flies commuter planes for Continental and United, mostly in Florida and the Bahamas. Gulfstream has never had a fatal accident.

Pilots say Gulfstream has an unhealthy relationship between its airline and its flight school. Gulfstream’s training program is different from others, because it guarantees students time as a first officer, the No. 2 position in the cockpit, flying passengers for its own airline, Gulfstream says on it Web site.

“We offer the fastest possible transition to the ‘Right Seat’ of a commercial airliner,” Gulfstream says.

For $32,699, students get 522 hours of training -- including 250 hours as a first officer for Gulfstream International Airlines. That means student pilots are paying Gulfstream for the privilege of flying as first officers.

“Gulfstream is selling the job,” says Charlie Preusser, a regional airline pilot who flew for Manassas, Virginia-based Colgan Air. “When you’ve got a guy fronting the cash, there’s a lot of pressure on the company to keep him onboard no matter how bad he is.”

Meeting Standards

Gulfstream CEO Hackett says all of the airline’s first officers meet FAA standards to fly a commercial airline.

Gulfstream International Group Inc., the parent of both the airline and the flight school, went public in December 2007.

Its share price dropped 21 percent in the week following the May 21, 2009, FAA-proposed fine. The stock has tumbled a total of 51 percent to $1.42 as of Dec. 29. In the four quarters ending September 30, 2009, the company reported $6.5 million in losses, with $88.7 million in revenue.

Gulfstream’s initial public offering was underwritten by Taglich Brothers Inc., a New York brokerage that publishes research on 31 companies with market values of less than $250 million. Michael Taglich, president and chairman of the firm, is Gulfstream’s largest individual shareholder, regulatory filings show.

“Gulfstream didn’t do anything materially wrong, and I’m confident that there’s no material substance to the FAA allegations,” Taglich says.

Shares Downgraded

Taglich Brothers, the only company that rates Gulfstream stock, downgraded its recommendation on the shares to “neutral” from “speculative buy” in June because of the proposed FAA penalty.

In October, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to toughen training requirements so that an airline pilot would need 1,500 flight hours, up from 250 currently. The Senate hasn’t yet voted on that measure.

“It’s clear there’s a difference between the major airlines and the regionals,” Senator Begich says. “It’s bad business and bad safety procedure for the majors not to understand that whatever standards they’re living by, they should have the same standards for their regionals.”

One of the FAA’s top priorities is making performance consistent across major and regional airlines, says spokeswoman Duquette.

‘Definitely Acknowledge’

“We definitely acknowledge there needs to be a greater level of professionalism,” she says of regional airlines.

On June 15, the FAA asked airlines in the U.S. for written commitments showing they’ve started or planned accident- prevention programs; 98 percent have done so, the FAA said in October.

Roger Cohen, president of the Regional Airline Association, says the more than 30 companies he represents follow all federal regulations.

“There is no gap between major airlines and regionals on safety because it is the No. 1 priority and the same for every airline,” he says. The association opposes raising minimum flight hours to 1,500 because that could discourage people from becoming pilots, Cohen says.

The major airlines say they trust their regional counterparts.

‘Top Priority’

“Safety is Continental Airlines’ top priority, and we expect the same from our partners,” spokeswoman Julie King says. She declined to comment on Continental’s affiliation with Gulfstream.

United Airlines spokeswoman Megan McCarthy says, “All of our regional airline partners meet FAA and United’s own high standards.” US Airways Group Inc. spokeswoman Valerie Wunder declined to comment. Delta Air Lines spokeswoman Betsy Talton didn’t return calls for comment.

The majors don’t typically hire pilots straight out of flight school. Pilots usually get experience at regionals first and have accumulated about 4,000 hours of flight experience before they’re hired by the large airlines, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Regional airlines pay pilots annual salaries as low as $18,264, according to Kit Darby, a retired United Airlines captain who’s now a consultant and flight instructor in Atlanta. That salary level was below the official poverty line of $21,834 for a family of four in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Pilots Commute

Pilots endure the low pay for the promise of six-figure salaries at the major airlines, says Darby, who has testified in civil cases for both defendants and plaintiffs as an expert on pilot hiring and compensation.

Pilots for regionals frequently commute across the U.S. for flights because they can’t afford to live near the airports where they’re based, Darby says.

Before operating a plane, they often sleep in crew lounges or at so-called crash pads, temporary apartments where as many as six pilots share a bedroom. Former Colgan pilot Preusser lived full time in a crash pad in Albany, New York, in 2007.

He says he slept on an air mattress and shared a room with three or four people. One pilot slept in a walk-in closet, he says. Many regional pilots can’t afford meals and keep track of which hotels offer free continental breakfasts, Preusser says.

Preusser says he remembers falling asleep in the cockpit while piloting a 50-seat Embraer RJ145. He had been on standby and was assigned at the last minute to fly a 7 p.m. flight from Dallas to Cincinnati.

‘It’s Very Scary’

The next day, he started at 5 a.m. and flew three more flights. On the final trip that day, he dozed off for a few seconds.

“That adds up to: Let’s just play Russian roulette with air traffic safety,” Preusser says. “In the pilot world, being aware of your environment and what the airplane is doing is absolutely requisite. You’re not fully conscious or even conscious at all and then you snap to, and it’s very scary.”

John Nance, a retired Air Force pilot who also flew for Alaska Airlines and has about 40 years of flying experience, says airlines are closing their eyes to issues of training, pay and living conditions among regional pilots.

“This business of see no evil, hear no evil doesn’t cut it,” says Nance, who’s testified for both plaintiffs and defendants in civil cases as an expert on air safety. “It is totally unacceptable legally, morally, ethically for any airline leadership to pretend they don’t know what they know.”

‘Fly Smart’

At Gulfstream Training Academy in Fort Lauderdale, the company tells prospective students that the school will teach them all they need to know about being commercial pilots.

“Jump-start your airline pilot career,” the academy says on its Web site. “Fly safe, fly smart, fly Gulfstream.”

The aviation school is about five miles (eight kilometers) from the Atlantic coast, and its campus is peppered with palm trees. Former Gulfstream pilot Edwards, who says the academy trained him well, says students would study sitting by the ocean.

“We would go to the beach and sit there in chairs on the sand and quiz each other,” he says.

Gulfstream pays its new first officers $19.01 an hour to fly. Before September, the trainee first officers were paid $8 an hour.

“I’ll stack our training program against any in the industry,” says Hackett, 48, a former director of financial planning at Continental who joined Gulfstream in 2003 and became CEO in 2006.

Broken Parts

Dan Brisco, a licensed pilot who spent 18 months as the lead mechanic at Gulfstream’s Tampa base until the end of 2007, says Gulfstream Airlines is more concerned with cutting expenses than in focusing on safety.

Brisco says Gulfstream routinely flew passengers on planes with broken parts, including wheels and landing gear.

“They push the airplanes out in whatever condition they’re in,” says Brisco, 51, who has more than 20 years of experience as an airline mechanic. “Unless they physically stop running, they’re not going to get any maintenance.”

Brisco says he left Gulfstream in 2007 after he repeatedly complained to his supervisor that the company’s operations were unsafe. He has since spoken with the FAA.

Gulfstream spokesman Bruce Hicks says Brisco never complained about safety issues.

When the FAA announced its proposed $1.3 million fine of Gulfstream in May 2009, the agency said the airline had installed unapproved air-conditioner compressors in its planes between September 2006 and May 2008.

Not FAA-Certified

Gulfstream has 23 Beechcraft 1900D turboprops, according to a Nov. 16, 2009, regulatory filing. Gulfstream bought automotive air-conditioner parts for its aircraft and modified them to use in planes, an FAA inspector found.

Such equipment isn’t certified for use on aircraft, the inspector wrote. Brisco says the danger of using non-FAA certified parts is that they could explode because they may not be able to withstand extreme temperature and air pressure changes.

FAA inspectors found that crews had repeatedly reported several malfunctioning parts on airplanes, including vapor cycle systems.

The FAA hasn’t yet collected the fine. FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown says she can’t comment on Gulfstream because the agency is in the middle of an enforcement action.

The agency hasn’t publicly released its inspectors’ reports. Former Gulfstream pilot Edwards obtained them through a Freedom of Information Act request.

No Safety Issue

Hackett says his company bought the same parts that are in FAA-approved air conditioners to make repairs that met FAA standards, so there was no safety issue.

“We believe what we did is correct,” he says. After the FAA inspection, Gulfstream replaced the parts with FAA-approved compressors.

Brisco says he remembers in May 2007 when the landing gear for the nose of a plane didn’t come down when arriving in Tampa. The plane landed on its belly and had to be evacuated on the runway, a risky maneuver that could have resulted in death or injuries, Brisco says.

Pilots had been complaining for several days that the gear wasn’t working properly, and mechanics were signing off on the safety of the aircraft without fixing it, Brisco says.

The FAA’s Service Difficulty Record database documents that May 11, 2007, landing. The files show that the pilots shut down one of the plane’s engines at an altitude of 1,000 feet (305 meters) and turned off the second engine before touching the ground.

Six More Reports

There were six other reports filed in the previous month about the landing gear malfunctioning on that same plane.

Gulfstream spokesman Hicks says the landing gear was a manufacturer’s shortcoming, not a maintenance issue. He says Gulfstream’s maintenance program has received the FAA’s diamond certificate of excellence for 13 consecutive years, including 2008.

That distinction is based solely on the number of hours personnel spend in training, says the FAA’s Duquette.

Gulfstream pushes fledgling pilots to fly for more hours in a day than the FAA allows, says Mary Hebig, who was a crew scheduler at Gulfstream from 2005 to 2007.

Hebig, 64, says she quit because she didn’t want to be responsible for scheduling pilots who were flying while fatigued and on unsafe aircraft.

‘Like Their Mother’

“I just felt like their mother,” Hebig says. “Some of these kids are so young, and they want to do the right thing. They come out of the academy, and everyone is telling them, ‘You gotta suck up to Gulfstream, do what they say.’ These poor kids are brainwashed from the time they hit the street.”

Hackett says Hebig doesn’t understand FAA rules on flying hours.

Hebig, who worked the night shift, says she remembers seeing firetrucks in October 2006 surround an aircraft that took off from Fort Lauderdale and made an emergency return after an engine failed in flight.

“Thank God everybody made it back OK,” she said. “Two days later, the same aircraft went out of Fort Lauderdale again and had another return with the same engine and same result.”

Gulfstream fixed the engine after its second failure, she says.

“We train our pilots to be overly cautious,” Hackett says. “I’m not saying it’s an everyday matter, but sometimes engines don’t always work perfectly.”

Exceeding Limits

When the FAA announced its fine in May, it said Gulfstream hadn’t properly entered pilot flying hours from its manual, hard-copy logbooks into its computers. As a result, crew members flew more hours than the FAA allowed, both daily and weekly, the regulator found.

Gulfstream dispatchers were routinely working shifts exceeding the regulatory maximum of 10 hours, an FAA inspector wrote.

John Horton, director of safety at Gulfstream, told FAA inspector Terrence McMaster in May 2008 that most Aviation Safety Action Program reports -- confidential complaints filed by pilots without punitive consequences -- centered on crew members who worked more than their legal limit of 16 hours a day.

“Mr. Horton stated that in one case it was discovered by him, during the course of his investigation, that a crew scheduler had falsified flight times and duty times,” the FAA inspector wrote.

Never Falsified Records

Hackett says the FAA is confused by Gulfstream’s record keeping. He says the company never falsified flight or duty time records and doesn’t ask its pilots to fly more than the legal limits.

Edwards, the former Gulfstream pilot who’s now a whistle- blower, had long dreamed of becoming an aviator. The walls of his living room are decorated with images of airplanes from vintage travel posters.

Since leaving Gulfstream, he has made ends meet by working as a waiter in a sports bar and giving guitar lessons.

He attended Gulfstream Academy in 2000 and was hired by Gulfstream Airlines in 2001 as a first officer after accumulating about 460 hours of flight time, including the 250 he bought flying for the airline, he says.

Edwards, who’s 6 feet tall and sports a goatee, says his Dec. 10, 2007, flight assignment from Tampa to West Palm Beach wasn’t the first time he’d found a Gulfstream plane unsafe.

Stormy Weather

He refused to fly one of Gulfstream’s turboprops from West Palm Beach to Tampa in stormy weather on Oct. 1, 2007, because he says it didn’t have all of the equipment needed to safely approach an airport and steer the aircraft on the ground.

After he complained, Gulfstream gave him a work schedule that made it virtually impossible for him to fly home and see his wife in Phoenix, Edwards says. Edwards decided to quit. He gave Gulfstream two weeks’ notice several days before the Dec. 10 flight assignment.

The turboprop that day had a broken traffic and collision avoidance system, or TCAS, which shows pilots the location of other aircraft relative to their position in the air, Edwards says.

In addition, worn-out door seals meant the cabin wasn’t properly pressurized above 10,000 feet, he says.

Hackett says the TCAS on that airplane had been repaired, and it wasn’t needed anyway.

“I can tell you with certainty that maintenance signed it off,” Hackett says. “He inconvenienced a whole planeload of passengers for a plane that was legal to fly.”

Nothing Wrong

Gulfstream spokesman Hicks says there was nothing wrong with the plane’s air pressurization and that another pilot later flew the plane without incident.

Edwards says he saw maintenance workers remove the broken TCAS, which is a computer, lubricate its plug, and put it back in, saying it was fixed.

“I didn’t think that plane was safe to fly,” he says.

Federal Aviation Regulation Part 121.533 says, “Each pilot-in-command has full control and authority in the operation of the aircraft.”

Edwards says that on the evening he refused to take the plane in the air, Gulfstream’s director of operations told him he should consider his resignation effective immediately.

The next day, Dec. 11, 2007, Gulfstream sent Edwards a letter saying he was fired because he had refused to operate the flight.

“Your decision delayed the flight for over two hours and inconvenienced our customers without just cause,” the notice says.

Suit Contested

Edwards filed his lawsuit in September 2008 in Broward County under a Florida whistle-blower act that protects employees from retaliation if they complain about wrongdoing at their company. He’s seeking compensatory damages of more than $15,000.

In a court-filed response dated Nov. 11, 2008, Gulfstream denied any wrongdoing and requested dismissal of the case, which is pending.

The cost-cutting culture is pervasive at regional airlines, putting passenger safety at risk, says Scott Erickson, a captain at Pinnacle Airlines, based in Memphis, Tennessee, and head of Pinnacle’s pilots union.

Pinnacle Airlines Corp. owns Colgan, which operated the Continental commuter that crashed near Buffalo. Pinnacle spokesman Joe Williams says, “The goal is to be the industry leader in safety, not just the regionals’.”

Erickson says the battle for the lowest ticket price that’s ensued since airlines were deregulated undermines protection of passengers and flight crews.

“We say, ‘Competition is the enemy of safety,’” says Erickson, who lives in Minneapolis and joined Pinnacle in 2000.

Lower Fares

The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 removed government controls on fares, routes and schedules to encourage competition. Adjusted for inflation since 1978, the cost per passenger of flying one domestic mile has halved to 4.19 cents as of 2008, according to the Air Transport Association.

The growth in commuter airlines accelerated in the past two decades with the invention of the regional jet.

“The geographic scope of regional airlines now has gone almost coast-to-coast from just a couple hundred miles with turboprops,” says Roger King, an analyst at Creditsights Inc. who has covered airlines for 20 years.

“As the jets came in, they were able to fly more people cheaper and faster. The demand accelerated,” King says. In exchange for flying routes at decreased costs for major airlines, the regional carriers get to piggyback off their larger partners’ brand and customer base.

A Fixed Fee

“Without the majors, the little airline would have to do its own marketing; it would have to take the risk of oil price hikes and demand,” King says.

“They’re providing the service to the major airline for a fixed fee,” he says. “They’re forced to cut their costs to the bone to make up for the fact that the major airline can’t because of union contracts.”

SkyWest Inc.’s agreement to fly under the Delta name requires the regional airline to keep its costs at or below the average rates for all of Delta’s commuter airline partners, SkyWest Chief Financial Officer Bradford Rich said on its first- quarter earnings call in May.

When Delta acquired Northwest Airlines Corp. and its commuter contracts in 2008, Delta’s average rates went down, forcing SkyWest to cut its costs, said Rich, who didn’t return calls seeking comment.

CEO Jerry Atkin said in June that St. George, Utah-based SkyWest’s costs are among the lowest in the industry, allowing it to take market share when competitors’ contracts expire.

‘Do Things Right’

Rice of the Air Line Pilots Association says the cost- saving approach in the industry discourages regionals from putting more effort into safety.

“The regional airlines that do things right, that train well above the minimum required standards, should not be penalized by the industry structure that we have in this country,” Rice says.

Many regional pilots say that affording a place to live is often harder than flying. Low pay coupled with airlines that regularly open and close bases have made the commuting of hundreds of miles to work the norm, says pilot Mark Segaloff, who lives in Austin, Texas.

His flight assignments are based out of Newark, New Jersey.

‘Didn’t Really Know’

“I didn’t really know how difficult it would be,” he says. His initial pilot salary was $22,000 a year, so he worked a side job as a waiter at a TGI Friday’s restaurant in Albany, New York.

Segaloff, 26, is now a captain and head of the Colgan pilots union. To cope with the commute, many pilots stay in crash pads near airports.

The Web site www.crashpads.com has a database with 350 listings, says Steve Botkin, president of Flight Crew Services, who started the site in 1997. Crash pads provide better sleeping conditions than crew lounges, says Botkin, whose site has had 10,000 members.

Mark Yakopovich, a flight attendant for Republic Airways Holdings Inc., says he decided to run his own crash pad near LaGuardia Airport in the borough of Queens, New York, eight years ago after staying at unlocked apartments that sometimes didn’t even have beds.

Yakopovich, 56, charges $200 a month for one of 22 beds in his five-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in East Elmhurst, New York. The crash pad is two apartments on the first and third floors of a brick building that’s a five-minute walk to a US Airways building.

Arrows to Mattresses

The bottom apartment’s living room functions as the common area for both spaces, with a futon, a television and a desk. The kitchen is upstairs in the third-floor apartment. The bedposts have stickers on them with pilots’ and flight attendants’ names, along with arrows pointing to their mattresses.

“You need a place that doesn’t smell like sewage,” he says. “I feel very strongly about having a quiet place, a secure place and your own bed to get the rest. It’s all about saving lives.”

The commuting and living conditions, the pilot fatigue, the minimal training and the use of faulty aircraft are posing a danger for millions of Americans.

“Here’s what the customers do: They assume the FAA, the federal government and the airlines are doing their job on safety,” says Senator Begich.

No Action

The FAA and federal government have failed to ensure that regional airlines are as safe as their major partners, says Begich, whose father died in a 1972 charter plane crash.

In the 10 months since the fatal crash in upstate New York, the U.S. Senate held six hearings on aviation safety and two more on the reauthorization of the FAA. So far, it has taken no action.

The FAA said in mid-2009 that it would introduce new regulations regarding pilot flight hours by Dec. 31. Now, it’s saying the rules will change in 2010.

Former Gulfstream pilot Edwards says government delays in enforcing and improving safety rules put the public at risk.

“The only thing that I think would really change the situation, as much as I hate to say this, is more accidents,” he says.

Until the FAA steps up, passengers traveling on commuter flights will be left wondering whether buying a cheaper ticket will continue to mean bargaining away their safety.

To contact the reporter on this story: Caroline Salas in New York at csalas1@bloomberg.net;

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Air Safety Round Table

April 21, 2009

In a landmark event, members of parliament, aviation experts, accident survivors and whistle blowers gathered on Parliament Hill in Ottawa for a round table discussion on the decline of air safety in Canada. 

Few Canadians realize that the major airlines are governing themselves, with little if any government oversight. Despite industry protest, Transport Canada is quietly attempting to pass regulations that would make the remaining majority of the aviation industry – the air taxi, commuter and maintenance sectors – essentially responsible for themselves. Already Transport Canada has ceased almost all regulatory oversight in these sectors, which are rife with problems.

Canadians need to know that despite lessons learned from aviation accidents and related problems in the rail industry, Transport Canada has abandoned them and left their lives in the hands of those responsible for profit margins – a dangerous strategy which is likely to have tragic consequences.

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Congress to toughen airline standards

 

In Legislation to be Introduced Today, Lawmakers Aim to Mandate Successful Safety Programs

 

By Alan Levin, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON

Safety standards for airlines and pilots would be dramatically toughened in legislation scheduled to be introduced Wednesday in Congress.

Prompted by the crash last February near Buffalo that has raised questions about pilot qualifications, training and fatigue, the "Airline Safety and Pilot Training Improvement Act of 2009" aims to find the most successful safety programs and mandate them for all airlines, said Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Ill., chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee.

The bill would add tough new certification requirements for entry-level commercial pilots, require additional emergency training, improve availability of pilot records and mandate stricter rules to minimize pilot fatigue.

"Our bill is a serious effort to consolidate what we know industry-wide about aviation safety to improve safety performance going forward," Costello said in a statement.

The bill would:

" Require that all airline pilots obtain an Airline Transport Pilot license, which is currently only needed by captains. Pilots must have a minimum of 1,500 flight hours to obtain the license. Co-pilots may now be hired at airlines with as little as about 200 hours, though most begin airline work with more experience.

" Mandate that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) within 90 days set up a new database of pilot records so that airlines will have access to more information before they hire someone for the cockpit. The captain of the jet that crashed near Buffalo had failed several FAA-mandated tests of his piloting skills, but his airline did not know about all of them when it hired him.

" Direct the FAA within one year to rewrite the rules for how long pilots can work. Several attempts to rewrite the rules to make piloting less prone to fatigue have failed in recent decades. FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt also has vowed to update the rules.

" Require airlines and travel websites when they sell tickets to disclose the name of the carrier operating the flight. About half of all flights are operated by regional airlines working under contract to major carriers, but those regionals almost never sell tickets directly to passengers. Most of the regional flights are flown with the name of the major carrier painted on their aircraft.

" Set up numerous studies and task forces to examine how best to train pilots, minimize pilot fatigue and run a safe airline.

The Air Transport Association, which represents large carriers, issued a statement saying that it would prefer that current efforts to improve safety begun earlier this year by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood be allowed to work before Congress passes legislation.

"We believe in that process, and we believe it should be allowed to proceed to a successful conclusion," said ATA President James May.

The Regional Airline Association said it welcomes changes that improve safety. Several parts of the bill are already contained in the association's safety initiative, it said in a statement.

The crash Feb. 12 of a Colgan Air turboprop, which killed 50 people, has raised numerous safety issues. A National Transportation Safety Board investigation has found that neither pilot may have gotten a full night's sleep. The pilots also reacted improperly to an emergency, raising questions about how well they were trained.

 

 

FAA Airline Safety and Pilot Training Action Plan

 

Please click here to read about the FAA Airline Safety and Pilot Training Action Plan released in June.  As an airline pilot or employee, do you personally feel that this plan adequately alleviates your present concerns involving airline safety, training, and especially the ability to feel comfort and security in reporting safety issues via appropriate communications channels without impediment or fear of intimidation or recrimination?

 

Kindly forward your anonymous remarks to us about this step the FAA has recently taken by using our "Contact Page " of this website to provide us feedback. 

 

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How Safe Is Airplane Air?

By  JOEL GROVER and MATT GOLDBERG

Updated 6:57 AM PDT, Fri, Jul 24, 2009

Just how safe is the air you breathe on commercial airplanes?

 

An untold number of air travelers have complained of experiencing tremors, crippling headaches and other neurological problems after breathing strong fumes while in flight.

"The flying public has a right to know what they're breathing," said Aviation attorney Alisa Brodkowitz.

Brodkowitz wants to know what happened to two of her clients, twin sisters Victoria and Valerie Vaughn, after they left Los Angeles International Airport last January, on a Southwest Boeing 737 to Nashville, Tenn.

According to a petition filed in Los Anegels Superior Court, the plane filled with a strange mist, then made an emergency landing. Ever since that flight, the Vaughn sisters say they've been seriously ill.

"They experienced severe headaches, tremors, cognitive problems, memory problems," says Brodkowitz.

The mystery of what's happened to the Vaughn sisters and other travelers might be starting to unravel, nearly a decade after Congress ordered the National Academy of Sciences to study the air on commercial planes.

That study, and other studies done abroad, reveal that toxic jet engine oil fumes sometimes "unintentionally enter the cabin" of a plane.

Dr. Clement Furlong at the University of Washington, who's studying the problem of toxic air on planes, believes a chemical found only in jet engine oil -- called TCP -- has poisoned passengers and crew.

"These are pilots and crew from all over the world, they describe similar symptoms," Furlong said.

Former flight attendant Karen Burns says she experienced symptoms, like tremors and memory loss, for three years after breathing fumes on one particular flight.

Angie Estes, 77, says she still has daily tremors that began the day after she flew home to Seattle from visiting family in Phoenix.

"It comes on so fast," says Estes.

These alleged illnesses have even been documented in a film made by former commercial pilot Tristan Loraine, who believes he was poisoned by fumes on one of his flights.

"My doctors decided that the medical effects and symptoms which I had were such that my health had been compromised to the point that it was no longer safe for me to fly," Loraine said.

So how do toxic fumes end up in the air you breathe on a plane?

Numerous studies now blame what's called a "bleed air system," which is used on almost all commercial jets made by Boeing and Airbus.

In a bleed air system, the plane's engines suck in fresh air from the outside and circulate it through the plane.

But the studies show, if there are oil leaks in the engine, which are not uncommon, the system can actually pump toxic fumes through the cabin and that can cause nervous system disorders.

Both Boeing and Airbus tell us that air on its planes can occasionally become contaminated. Boeing claims those fumes can only cause short-term health problems for travelers, not long-term illnesses.

Airbus says it's not aware of any significant problems from the contaminated air.

But some travelers who say they've fallen ill, like Valerie and Victoria Vaughn, want more information.

That's why their lawyers took Southwest Airlines to court this past week. Southwest says there were no toxic fumes on the Vaughns' flight from LAX, but the airline agreed in court to turn over evidence from the grounded plane to the Vaughns' lawyers and allow them to test materials from the 737 to see if any chemicals might have been in the cabin air.

And Congress is now calling for a long-term solution to the problem of contaminated bleed air.

The U.S. House just passed a bill calling for the FAA to study requiring sensors and filters on planes that would detect and remove toxic fumes inside an airplane. The technology already exists, but would be costly to install.

"Airline manufacturers should equip their planes with filters that would filter out chemicals so people don't breathe them," Brodkowitz said.

What to Do If You Are Exposed to Toxic Fumes on an Airplane

1. Know what oil fumes smell like. Dirty socks, "chemically smell," vomit, wet dog, and burning oil are the most common descriptors, but some people have described electrical or fuel smells that turn out to be engine oil fumes.
2. If you see or smell oil fumes, or feel ill from breathing the airplane's air, notify the cabin crew. Ask for assistance and request that the pilot record the problem in the logbook to ensure that maintenance staff members investigate the problem.
3. Engine oil fumes are a toxic soup of chemicals, including some oil additives called tricresyl phosphates (TCPs). Symptoms associated with exposure vary, but some of the most commonly reported initial symptoms are stomach cramps, muscle weakness and flu-like symptoms. TCP exposure can also cause chronic tremors, problems with gait and balance, tingling/numbness, fatigue, memory loss, attention deficit and difficulties with speech. Some of these neurological symptoms may develop during the days or weeks after being exposed. Engine oil fumes can also contain carbon monoxide gas, causing headache, dizziness, weakness, fainting and confusion.
4. Write down the tail number of the aircraft and the aircraft type. If possible, ask a crewmember for the aircraft number, or at least try to record the tail number, which is painted on the outside of the aircraft tail.
5. Keep a record of any symptoms and take photos/video of any visible symptoms (e.g., tremor, rash).
6. If you need to see a doctor, take a copy of the health care providers' guide posted here: http://www.ohrca.org/pdf/quickreference.pdf
7. Write to the airline, reporting the event and asking for the name of the engine oil used on your aircraft and any relevant aircraft mechanical records. Keep a copy of your letter for your records.
8. Get your blood drawn and analyzed for oil fume additives. Instructions at: http://ashsd.afacwa.org/docs/howto.htm .
9. Write to Dr. Fred Tilton, the Federal Air Surgeon at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Tell him that you do not want to be exposed to toxic oil fumes or hydraulic fluid fumes. Urge him to require that cabin supply air be filtered before you breathe it.
10. Finally, file a complaint with the Department of Transportation Aviation Consumer Action Division at: http://airconsumer.dot.gov/problems.htm
11. For more information on bleed air exposure visit these websites: http://www.aopis.org/  http://www.aerotoxic.org/ and http://www.toxicfreeairlines.com/