Exactly. It sounds like fatigue played a role in that accident... but, sadly, the media is reporting on these new regs as if fatigue was determined to be the primary cause. I think the primary cause was a culture of the airlines putting cost before safety. You had a Captain that had failed... what was it?... 7 checkrides in his short career! And a wet-behind-the-ears First Officer that had never even flown in icing conditions before and couldn't afford to call in sick or to even have someplace in base to get a good night's sleep before her trip.

What allowed those pilots to be in the cockpit that day? Cost before safety. What caliber of individuals must we be attracting now to a profession that requires a civilian to go massively in debt to enter, offers starvation wages for way longer than it typically used to, and then when you finally make it to the major airlines, it pays about half what it used to? Cannot possibly be the same caliber of new entrants to this profession (not all, but in general). Again, cost before safety.

If the FAA is serious about safety, they need to be taking a very hard look at what has happened to this profession over the past decade. Same goes for ALPA or any other pilot's union that claims safety as its number one priority.