Senate
Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security
U.S.
Senate
322
Hart Senate Office Building
Washington,
D. C. 20510
SUBJ:
SUPPRESSION OF U.S. AIRLINE PILOTS REGARDING ISSUES OF SAFETY
Dear
Senator Dorgan,
I
write this letter to you today as an addendum to the letter forwarded to your
office dated May 31, 2009, as I have since then been informed by your committee
staffer Rich Swayze that it would be included as part of public congressional
record associated with your upcoming June 10th hearing concerning the FAA
oversight role of commercial air carriers.
In
my May 31st letter to you, I advised your committee of my willingness, as well
as that of other airline pilots, to testify in open or closed committee
hearings concerning the alleged systemic and ongoing suppression of airline
pilots when reporting concerns of air safety, which denigrates the safety of
the travelling public. In recent phone
discussions with Mr. Swayze, he indicated that FAA whistleblower Chris
Monteleon was being summoned to Washington by your subcommittee to provide
testimony regarding his recent allegations that were broadly detailed by
numerous print media outlet journalists.
Mr. Swayze did not however indicate to me whether other pilots and I
would be afforded the same invitation, and it is for this reason that I specifically write to you today.
In
reviewing my attached affidavit, you will note that in 2003, after many
frustrated attempts to address numerous safety issues of concern via
appropriate protocols and legal channels within my union and to company
management personnel in an attempt to keep these issues ‘in-house’ while United
Airlines was in the midst of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, I resorted to
inclusion of the FAA-assigned Principle Operation Inspector (POI) in hopes of
drawing his oversight authority of all aspects of United Airlines operations
into the equation. This drastic measure
was employed by me only after I realized that all previous efforts were futile
and my overriding concern for public safety regarding the apparent stonewalling
of previous face-to-face and phone conversations, reports, letters, and emails
had been thwarted by both company and union personnel. It should also be noted that prior to my
decision to resort to this legal and mandated federal communicative process, I
had drafted a letter that I had intended to send to United Airlines Chief
Executive Officer Glenn Tilton, but was advised by a union lawyer and another individual
in a conference call of July 27, 2003 that I would become ‘unemployed’ as a
captain if I were to send the letter.
Attached,
you will find a copy of an Aviation Safety Awareness Report dated September 13,
2003 that I submitted in accordance with the United Airlines 2003 Flight
Operations Manual (FOM), which delineated the specific administrative processes
and guidance associated with the Aviation Safety Awareness Program (ASAP),
which is inherently encompassed by Federal Aviation Regulations, Part 121,
Operating Requirements: Domestic, Flag,
and Supplemental Operations. You will
note that within this report, I iterated then what I have restated herein.
In
a subsequent phone conversation on September 19, 2003, I queried the ALPA
Central Air Safety Committee Chairman who had served as the ALPA representative
of the ASAP Event Review Committee (ERC) if, in fact, the FAA POI who had also
served on the ERC to review this ASAP report and, if so, his remarks during
said meeting. This individual indicated
to me that the POI had read my ASAP and expressed concern by stating that he
would investigate this matter further sometime in the future.
Recognizing
my success in drawing the POI into the equation while believing that I had at
last broken the communications logjam that I had experienced the past eighteen
months, on September 18, 2003, I subsequently submitted additional ASAP reports
that outlined all my previous safety and security concerns that had been
stonewalled, including issues that I had addressed in the drafted letter to Mr.
Tilton, but was never sent by me for the reasons stated above.
On
September 23, 2003, I received a phone call from my JFK Assistant Chief Pilot
advising me that I had been removed from schedule because of the ASAPs that I
had submitted. Kindly refer to my
attached affidavit for details of the tragic consequences and sad conclusion to
this story. The subsequent suppression
of these details the past five years
by the previous White House, members of congress, the Department of
Transportation, the Department of Justice, and the mainstream media gives
further testament to the sorry state of affairs regarding suppression of
information by pilots concerning the safety of the travelling public. Recent media revelations of the same at
Colgan Air were the ‘straw that broke this old pilot’s back’, as well as many
others in the airline industry and the FAA.
Because
I have not yet been notified by your office as to whether whistle blowing
pilots will be permitted to testify in either open or closed committee
hearings, but being advised that my May 31st letter to you would be included as
part of public congressional record, it is respectfully requested that this
letter with attachments be included in my file as well. I would be more than happy to fly to
Washington at my own expense to meet face-to-face with committee staffers in
the very near future to provide additional material evidence and testimony, as
well as a list of credible witnesses who have already agreed to provide supporting
testimony to my allegations as stated in my affidavit.
Additionally,
an open letter to President Obama dated June 7, 2009 is forthcoming to your
office and request is hereby made that this letter also be included as part of
my public testimony for inclusion in congressional records. Thank you for your consideration of these
critical safety issues.
Very
respectfully submitted,
Dan
Hanley
Former
United Airlines B-777 Captain
Encl: My letter to your office dated May 31, 2009
My Aviation Safety Awareness Report
dated September 13, 2003
My affidavit dated February 16, 2009
Cc: President
Barack Obama
Senator
John Rockefeller – Chairman, Committee on Commerce, Science and
Transportation
Calvin L. Scovel III – Inspector General, Department of
Transportation
Ray LaHood – Secretary, Department of
Transportation
J. Randolf Babbitt – Administrator,
Federal Aviation Administration
Richard Swayze – Staffer, Senate
Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and
Security
Glenn Fine – Inspector General,
Department of Justice
Eric Holder – Attorney General of the
United States
Robert Mueller – Director, Federal
Bureau of Investigation
Kenneth Kaiser – Assistant Director,
FBI Criminal Investigative Division
Robert Grant – Special
Agent-in-Charge, Office of the Chicago FBI
Senator Claire McCaskill – Member,
Senate Subcommittee on Transportation
Senator Johnny Isakson – Member, Senate Subcommittee onAviation Operations, Safety, and Security
Senator Saxby Chambliss
Senator Charles Grassley – Ranking
Member, Committee on Finance
Senator Daniel Akaka – Chairman,
Committee on Homeland Security/Govt Affairs
Congressman Jerry Costello –
Chairman, House Aviation Subcommittee
Congressman Lynn Westmoreland –
Member, House Aviation Subcommittee
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee,
Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Transportation
Security and Infrastructure
Protection
Barbara Hollingsworth – Reporter,
Washington Examiner
Matthew Wald – Reporter, New York
Times
Mary Williams-Walsh – Reporter, New
York Times
David Cay Johnston – Author and
former New York Times Investigative Journalist
Rocci Fisch – Senior Editor,
Washington Post
Tom Devine – Legal Director,
Government Accountability Project
David Hunter – Chairman, Project on
Government Oversight
Colgan Air blames captain, first officer in report to the NTSB
Airline cites crew's "failure to follow ... training and procedures"
Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed in February, killing all onboard, one on ground
Airline: Crew inappropriately responded to stall warnings, managed schedules improperly
Washington (CNN)
-- Colgan Air -- under fire for hiring, training, pay and commuting
policies after the February crash of Flight 3407 near Buffalo, New York
-- is blaming pilot error for the wreck, which killed all 49 people
aboard and one person on the ground.
In a 67-page report
submitted to the National Transportation Safety Board, Colgan blames
the captain and first officer, citing a litany of lapses that Colgan
said ultimately led to the commuter plane's crash.
Colgan said
the crew did not respond appropriately to warnings the plane was
entering an aerodynamic stall, did not complete checklists and failed
to follow "sterile cockpit" rules that prohibit unnecessary
conversation during critical phases of flight.
Colgan
concluded the crash was caused by the crew's "loss of situational
awareness and failure to follow Colgan Air training and procedures."
After
the crash, Colgan said the pilot, Capt. Marvin Renslow, had failed
three pilot tests, known as "check-rides," before joining the airline,
but had disclosed only one on a job application. He failed another two
check-rides while at Colgan Air.
In August, Philip Trenary,
president and CEO of Pinnacle Airlines, the parent company of Colgan
Air, testified at a Senate hearing that while "a failure on a
check-ride is not necessarily a reason for someone not to fly, it
depends on what kind of failure it is."
"The failures that we
were unable to see were the basic fundamental failures that you would
not want to have," Trenary testified.
"Let me stress one thing,
Capt. Renslow was a fine man by all accounts," Trenary said in August.
But he added, "Had we known what we know now, no, he would not have
been in that seat."
At the time of the crash, Renslow had 3,379
hours of flight experience -- 172 hours in the Bombardier Dash 8-Q400
turboprop, the type of plane involved in the accident.
In Colgan's submission to the NTSB,
the company describes its hiring process as rigorous. But, Colgan said,
Renslow "was not truthful on his employment application." Renslow did
not disclose two of the three proficiency checks he failed, Colgan said.
Colgan
said it followed federal rules requiring airlines to seek applicants'
records, but it was unable to get some of Renslow's information because
"Renslow was not employed as a pilot at the time" of his failed check
rides. At the time, there was no published guidance on obtaining
information from the Federal Aviation Administration, Colgan said.
The
airline also said Renslow and First Officer Rebecca Shaw did not manage
their work schedules properly. While both operated flights out of
Newark, New Jersey, Renslow lived in Tampa, Florida, and Shaw lived in
Seattle, Washington.
During public hearings before the NTSB in
May, airline critics said low pay led crew members to live far from
their home bases, contributing to fatigue.
But Colgan said its
pay and commuting policies were not to blame. Renslow had 27 hours
between flights and Shaw had four days off before the crash, the
airline said.
"Colgan Air expects its pilots, and all its
employees, to present fit for duty, regardless of where they reside,"
the Colgan report said.
Shaw "did not plan her personal time
properly prior to reporting to duty," the airline said. "Rather than
commuting to [Newark] on February 11 and staying in a hotel, she chose
an overnight commute."
Shaw earned $26 an hour and was guaranteed
75 hours a month, putting her salary at a minimum of $23,400 a year,
Colgan said. But she was on pace to earn "well in excess" of the
minimum, the airline said.
In a separate submission, the Air Line
Pilots Association did not discount the role of the pilots, but said
the "fundamental training this crew needed for the situation faced the
night of the accident was inadequate." Further, the association said,
the Q400 aircraft did not have, nor was it required to have, systems
that would have alerted the pilots that the airspeed was abnormally low.
The NTSB is investigating the crash.
Evidence
collected by the NTSB suggests the crew improperly responded to signs
the plane was approaching an aerodynamic stall, pulling on the
aircraft's control column instead of pushing.
