Originally Posted by
deltabound
Unless I missed something, the FAA sets the standards on who gets to fly. The tests are objective, and everyone must go through the same hoops.
The "argument" that current work conditions are discouraging more generally desirable candidates may have merit, but this tragic incident has little or nothing to bolster it. In the eyes of the FAA, these two pilots (whatever their other faults) were fully qualified and had to go through some very specific and demanding training hurdles.
If this incident does bolster this "argument" in a peripheral fashion, the only NTSB recommendation I could see coming out of it would be for the FAA to make the barriers to entry and retention even more stringent (health, age, training qualification, tighter parameters and "wildcard" scenarios on checkrides, etc.).
I suspect pilot labor groups would strenuously object to harder checkrides that offer more realistic evaluations of pilot skill and judgment. The "canned" checkride is very much the career aviator's friend, particularly as the years go by.
Alternately, the FAA could institute a "2 strikes and you're out" policy. Two failed training events in the course of a career and that's the end of your flying (because a pattern has been established). This is a regulatory way to "weed-out" weak but technically proficient pilots and has the virtue of being objective and "fair". But man oh man . . . talk about checkride-itis!
(IMHO.)
Ask yourself would creating more barriers to pilot entry improve safety? Maybe. If you mean raise the standards for pilot qualifications that would only happen if they increase pilot pay. As for the health and age, both Colgan pilots I believe were neither too young or too old and both of them were in good health. Is a 19 year old as safe as a 25 year-old pilot? I don't know, the jury is still out on that one but many regionals have hired pilots who did not even graduate from school and we have guys flying at our airline that are 19 years old.
Your statement about "weeding out weak but technically prificient pilots" makes no sense. If you are weak you cannot be a technically proficient pilot. The CA on this Colgan flight were said to have had problems mastering the Flight Management System, the technical aspect. I don't have all the background facts on this pilot but I did not find any evidence that he had previously failed checkrides twice. Everyone is jumping to conclusions about this crew before the final NTSB judgment is out. We do not have all the facts so we need to wait for the NTSB's final analysis before pointing fingers. Even then we shouldn't be pointing fingers at anyone for none of us are infallible to making errors in judgment.
Only way to improve safety is to provide a solid training without cutting corners and increase pilot pay to attract and retain talented pilots with good disposition. Too many airlines are in a rush to finish pilots and skip vital training such as full stall recovery procedure in order to keep the sim sessions to a bare minimum. Foreign carriers in Asia and Western Europe have in general 20 to 30% more sim sessions during their pilot training to cover all the maneuvers.
I know pilots with great personalities and they also happen to be good sticks who cannot afford to fly for regionals because the pay is too low. They all opted to do something else.
The pilot pay needs to be increased, and crew pairing schedules needs drastic improvement and this encompasses crew duty and rest period definition. The FAA has been in bed with the airline management way too long on this one. There should be no layovers less than 10 hours and the time for rest period should not start until the crew checks in at the hotel. It definitely should not include time spent writing up the airplane for maintenance issues, waiting for that last passenger who seem to take forever to deplane, 45 minutes spent waiting for the hotel shuttle van and sometimes ludicrously long van ride to the hotel because the airline is too cheap to pick hotels that are closer to the airport.