Buffalo, New York-\u00a0July 1, 2013<\/p>\n
With\u00a0a key deadline in the landmark Airline Safety Act of\u00a02010\u00a0looming just one month away, the ‘Families of Continental Flight 3407’\u00a0challenged the\u00a0Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Transportation (DOT), and White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB)\u00a0to stand up to airline lobbying efforts aimed at watering down a critical entry-level pilot qualifications final rule. “It is coming down to crunch time,\u00a0and no sooner had DOT sent the paperwork over to OMB than the lobbyists for\u00a0A4A (Airlines\u00a0for America)\u00a0and RAA (Regional\u00a0Airline Association)\u00a0were scurrying over there to make sure they were the first\u00a0to sit down with\u00a0OMB,\u201d\u00a0stated\u00a0Scott Maurer of Moore, South Carolina, who lost his thirty year-old daughter Lorin in the crash.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went through this before with the flight and duty time rule, and in that case, the airlines were successful in getting FAA to water down the final rule from the initial proposal. We challenge Administrator Huerta and his colleagues at DOT and OMB to stand up to the airlines and make sure that this final rule accurately reflects Congress’s unanimous mandate that all entry-level regional airline first officers have a significantly stronger foundation prior to being hired, both in the quality of training and the amount of hands-on prior flight experience. The FAA’s proposal as written makes\u00a0fair allowances for military pilots and those trained at 4-year accredited university aviation programs, and we\u00a0are completely opposed to FAA lowering the bar any further in the final rule.\u201d<\/p>\n
In passing the ‘Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010’, Congress\u00a0included multiple provisions intended to raise the safety standard for the nation’s regional airlines. Regional airlines now account for over\u00a050 percent of\u00a0our nation’s commercial flights on a daily\u00a0basis, and the regionals have been responsible for every fatal crash since 2003. Key provisions of the\u00a0Safety Act targeted regional airline deficiencies in the experience level of their new first officers,\u00a0scheduling practices that contributed to pilot fatigue, and inadequacies in\u00a0the initial and recurrent crewmember training provided by the\u00a0regionals. Given FAA’s extensive track record of not meeting rulemaking deadlines, Congress included a default clause in the Safety Act\u00a0that would require all new commercial first officers to have an Airline Transport Pilot license, the same rating required of captains, if FAA did not complete the rulemaking by August 1, 2013.<\/p>\n
“We continue to remind everyone that raising the entry-level\u00a0requirements for first officers\u00a0was part of a larger plan by Congress to bring the regional airline’s commitment to, and investment in safety, on par with that of the major airlines – the true ‘One Level of Safety’ that my sister and everyone on that plane tragically did not receive,” stated Karen Eckert of\u00a0Williamsville, New York, who lost her sister and prominent 9\/11 widow and activist Beverly Eckert.\u00a0 \u201cThe airlines and their lobbyists have aggressively attempted to message this proposal as being unnecessary and the equivalent of pilots towing banners on a beach to gain the prerequisite number of hours.\u00a0 They conveniently overlook the two prongs of this initiative: combining a more robust pilot training certification program with additional hands-on flying experience that will give young pilots exposure to bad weather and other difficult operating conditions that they do not receive in flight school.\u00a0 But the airlines’\u00a0true motivation lies in their desire to preserve the status quo of regional airlines paying their first officers food stamp-level wages like what the first officer on Flight 3407 received.\u00a0 Hopefully FAA, DOT, and OMB\u00a0are able to see right through that and\u00a0come down on the side of\u00a0safety and the flying public when they issue their final rule.\u00a0 As always, we will be watching closely.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ‘Families of Continental Flight 3407\u2019 group was immediately organized after the crash as a support network and an activist group to work on aviation safety reform.\u00a0 Visit the group\u2019s website<\/a> or follow them on twitter @3407Families<\/a> learn more about their efforts.<\/p>\n Contact:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Takla Boujaoude\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0takla.3407@gmail.com \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0716-907-2425<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Buffalo, New York-\u00a0July 1, 2013 With\u00a0a key deadline in the landmark Airline Safety Act of\u00a02010\u00a0looming just one month away, the ‘Families of Continental Flight 3407’\u00a0challenged the\u00a0Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Transportation (DOT), and White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB)\u00a0to stand up to airline lobbying efforts aimed at watering down a critical entry-level […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3317,13],"class_list":["post-9168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-co3407","tag-legislation"],"yoast_head":"\n