The families, friends and loved ones of passengers who died in the crash of Continental Airlines crash 3407 in New York state in 2009 are urging the Biden admin to ban a controversial new regional air service that uses a loophole to hire pilots with fewer flying hours than is mandated for regular scheduled air services.
The Families of Continental 3407, which represents the loved ones of all 45 passengers and four crew members who died on February 12, 2009, is imploring Transporation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to reject an application by regional carrier Skywest, which operates flights on behalf of major carriers like American Airlines and Delta.
Continental Airlines flight 3407 was actually operated by Colgan Air, a regional operator just like Skywest. At the time, however, the Families of Continental 3407, say that regional carriers were “in a race to the bottom to cut costs”.
As a result, regional operators who flew on behalf of much larger airlines hired pilots with “less and less of experience”, provided “minimal training” and much lower salaries.
Following the crash of Continental 3407, however, Congress passed the Airline Safety Act of 2010. This law raised the minimum number of pilot flying hours to 1,500 for a so-called FAR Part 121 operator – essentially, any commercial passenger airline that operates regularly scheduled air services.
The Families of Continental 3407 say this law has worked exactly as intended, reducing fatalities from 1,100 in the 20 years preceding 2009 to zero as of today.
But now, regional operators like Skywest have found a loophole which allows them to operate regional services using pilots with fewer flying hours.
The loophole, under FAR Part 135, has already been implemented by another carrier called JSX, allowing it to operate commercial, non-scheduled aircraft operations on planes that carry no more than 30 passengers.
Essentially, JSX reduced the number of seats on its aircraft to a maximum of 30 and it sells tickets through an intermediary and markets the flights as charter services.
Because it is designated as a Part 135 carrier, JSX is able to hire pilots with fewer than 1,500 flying hours. It’s a model that Skywest wants to follow and is hoping to seek approval from the Department of Transportation to do so.
That’s something that aviation unions and other parties are vehemently opposed to.
“If this authorization is granted, it will take us back to the two levels of safety that Congress intended to eliminate with the Airline Safety Act of 2010,” the Families of Continental 3407 write in their letter to Buttigieg.
“We know all too well the consequences of lower standards of airline safety. We lost our spouse, our son or daughter, brother or sister, mother or father because they were not protected by the high level of safety provided today by the Airlines Safety Act of 2010 and ensuing FAA regulations.”
The Allied Pilots Association has also called for the DOT to crack down on this business model, and American Airlines is supporting the pilot’s calls to close this loophole.
The Biden administration is yet to make a formal decision.
