Another Pilot compensation article...
 

Commuter airlines' underpaid pilots are plain scary: Connie Schultz - Connie Schultz, Plain Dealer Columnist - cleveland.com



So we all know the result will be...crickets. But at least there should be a few less "I thought you guys made $450,000 a year." comments from the loving pax.

Yahwwwnnn........

OK...So yes we have seen this before.

Well this is gonna deter more people from flying thanks media.

I doubt that.

I agree. The way the pilot factories (ERAU, ATP, UND, GIA) sell this profession, there will always be someone willing to do it for pennies just so they can claim they are an airline pilot and make 6 digit salaries in a few years (yeah right!):rolleyes:. To add insult to injury, now with the 190 coming on property at RAH, I guarantee you the latest batch of graduates will be lining up around the corner to fly the 73 size aircraft just for bragging rights.

It's time to hit the reset button on our segment of the industry. If we don't, well let's just say that the Colgan accident is only the beginning. Best of luck to us all.

Spot on. That's it right there, I agree with you, nothing else to add.

How many kids at flight schools dying to put on that airline uniform and dreaming of kicking the tires of a jet as passengers look on from inside the terminal??? how many? lots.... the regionals know that

Roger Cohen, president of the Regional Airline Association is a $^#%ing idiot.

"Compensation has nothing to do with safety," he told the AP

How many of you have ever been working and all of a sudden you are thinking about how you can squeeze $300 to fix a problem with you car or fix the washer and dryer? It doesn't happen a whole lot, but every now and then I find myself thinking about money. I do not demand $100,000 to fly a Dash around nor do I think I deserve it, but I think more than my current $25,000 is more than understanding. Say $99,000....just kidding!! :D

Why are you kidding?

Until pilots value themselves properly, it's hopeless to expect management or the flying public to do so.

This kills me:

"Renslow had failed flight checks in the aircraft five times before he passed."

From what I read before, he failed his initial and upgrade. The other 3 were pre121. While still a lot of failures, he passed 6 PC's prior to the accident.

"He also reportedly did not know the emergency procedures to prevent the aircraft from stalling"


Yep. They got us now. Never once do we pilots ever get any stall training. Lets freak out the public more and tell them that regional pilots are as about experienced in flying as a waiter or school teacher. Opps, b!tch beat me to it..........

"We all know that low pay attracts less-experienced workers, from table servers to schoolteachers."

I totally agree with you sir 150%.

Well, apparently he didn't know the emergency procedures to prevent the aircraft from stalling. If he did, well we probably wouldn't be having this discussion.

As far as pay, it's hard to argue the fact that less pay attracts less experience. In the past, people were willing to look past that with the regionals, as they were merely a stepping stone to bigger, better things. That future has become much less certain. All we have to do is look at what's going on with Republic.

Common now. You are a pilot right? You really think he did not have the training to prevent an airplane from stalling? I guess anything is possible. From private Pilot to Part 121, I have never met, or taught a pilot who did not know how to prevent and airplane from stalling or know how to recover from a stall. I don't want to speculate what happened either. That is another forum....

The quote was:

"He also reportedly did not know the emergency procedures to prevent the aircraft from stalling".

Not:

"He was not trained to know the emergency procedures to prevent the aircraft from stalling".

I've met people that couldn't recover from a stall, but they were my student pilots with about 4 hours. This whole accident is just inexplicable.

Whether you want to call it "trained" or "know", the man knows or is trained how to prevent a stall from occurring and knows (or is trained) on how to recover from a stall. In a "Q" or a C-152, what ever. He did not make it as far as he did in his career by not knowing "the emergency procedures to prevent the aircraft from stalling". Why he did not implement his training is another issue, but the training had taken place and he had demonstrated his ability as a PIC to recover from and/or prevent a stall.

He did not make anywhere near 67K that they think he made. I think most Q captains are very lucky if they are even close to 60.

A current and qualified Captain made a fatal mistake. A mistake that we train to recognize and correct almost from our first lesson in an airplane.


The question we should be asking is how could he have made this basic error?


Five busts over a career - sounds pretty damning to an uninformed observer. But we all know that he had passed his last 6 PCs. We also know anyone can bust any ride, any time - no one can expect every ride to be perfect. And he was obviously current at the time of the accident.


So maybe his training itself was somehow flawed. Maybe he never understood the purpose of the pusher. Maybe he was simply trying to maintain back pressure to maintain angle of attack assuming the stall was imminent and not fully developed. But it seems unlikely he would have purposefully maintained that force throughout the stall.


Maybe he was fatigued. Maybe he was exhausted. Maybe it degraded his perceptions and reactions. So he could not recognize the decay of airspeed. So he did not react to the stick shaker and pusher properly. So he was late in adding full power.


Maybe he didn't recognized his fatigue before he left. Maybe he did, but felt pressure, real or imagined, to complete the mission for the sake of his job that day or for the sake of future references from his chief pilot. Maybe he felt financial pressure to complete the mission to get paid for the trip. Maybe he had debt built up from flight school. Maybe he took out loans to make ends meet as a First Officer. He was a family man, and pay at Colgan, even as Captain, isn't going to put a new minivan in the driveway for his wife, braces on his kids, or send them to even the lousiest state university. Maybe those financial concerns caused the kind of long term stress that dulls the senses and diminishes performance.


Maybe he was thinking about the pressures of being away from home for more than half of his childrens' lives. Maybe he was worried about not being there for the recitals, soccer games, birthdays, holidays, weekends, and every other special event in his family's future. Maybe he was worried about how that would affect his children. Maybe he was concerned about the stresses he was placing on his marriage, the effect his protracted absences placed on his wife. Maybe those thoughts, or something similar, were going through his mind when he should have noticed his airspeed bleeding away.



I reject the idea that the Captain was somehow not competent for the mission. I reject the idea that he was inadequately trained. I reject the idea that he was not experienced enough to be at the controls that night.


And I absolutely reject the idea that "Compensation has nothing to do with safety."

Unfortunately our industry, especially the regional market, has deteriorated to the point that the most important qualification is willingness.

Willingness to work for poverty wages, deal with hostile scheduling/sick call, and watch as a significant number of mainline jobs are converted to regional jobs. If you are willing to do the job and put up with their work environment the regional airlines are willing to let you get and keep your job.

I am not specifically referencing the BUF crew or questioning their training/qualifications.

If I remember correctly, the nose was coming up and the first officer freaked. Without being told by the captain, she raised the flaps. Wouldn't that raise the stall speed higher than they were going and that's why they stalled?

I know it's a minor point, but despite all the banter about compensation or lack thereof, nobody mentioned the fact that (unlike most professions) pilot jobs aren't transferable - with the same income. Does a physician who transfers jobs restart at an interns salary?

After reading this post http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/av...tml#post611926, I would expect you to already know the answer. Go ask your instructor.

http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/fl...tml#post611308 And leave the cellphone out of flying.

Not all pilots jobs involve working for the airlines.

It was a rhetorical question.

We all realize that. However....

...This is the "Regional airlines" forum. Is it not?

The suggestion that part 91 is a statistically relevant opt out option for the median regional F/O is also disingenuous.....

Its interesting that all us pilot talk about is our low compensation and we get angry at those pilots who are willing to fly for little money. But i never see any action from anyone who claims they are being robbed of the pay they deserve. So if this is such a huge issue and if we believe something will change. We need to step up and do something about it before it gets even worse.

And you know this how?

Um, Bureau of Labor Statistics, APC, climbto350, the local classifieds, a general .69 second search in google....you know....:rolleyes:

Sarcasm aside my point (if it eluded the readership) was that part 91 is currently incapable of absorbing the labor surplus, and it actually poses a lower aggregate compensation than that of regionals...I.E. that median turbo commander gig zippin' around losing your hearing probably requires more TT and is less available than the RJ crap-job.

I see. Well, good luck to you.


Everybody else: Since I'm actually in part 91, here's the deal:

Getting into corporate is about networking - always has been, always will. There are always positions opening up, and if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get into a pretty decent gig. Once you get typed, your skills are transferable so that in the event the worst happens, you are able to move on to another job at similar or better pay. How do you network? Keep those connections alive from flight school/flight training. Most of you probably have friends in 135 charter/freight and possibly corporate. Part 135 jobs have this horrible rap regarding pay and working conditions, but the majority of them are actually pretty decent (especially compared to most regionals). If you get a 135 job, you are will be gaining excellent experience for part 91 and will make some excellent connections along the way.

Obviously times are a little rough in corporate aviation right now, but it's rough everywhere. I've got friends in the engineering world that are worried about their jobs (or looking for jobs), I know recent grads from law school that have been looking for months, and even teachers are getting laid off in some counties. Things will get better, as they always do.