congress to Regulate Airline Safety
 

Hey Guys & Gals,

I was reading the Nov.- Dec. 09 edition of Airliners Magazine and they are saying that congress is trying to pass HR 3371 "The Airline Safety and Pilot Training Improvement Act of 2009. The purpose of this bill is to improve the safety and Training practices for the airline industry, so they say. Somewhere maybe in this series of laws or something totally different, I've heard that, because of the colgan air Q400 crash in NY and the fact that the captain of said flight had failed a checkride(s) & displayed poor performance on said checkrides, congress is looking at drafting a series of laws which will basically dictate that if a pilot fails any check ride, they may not be allowed to work for an airline or become a captain. This check ride evaluation history will begin with the private pilot check ride and go forward. ***?

Has anyone else heard of this on the news, I-net, or else where?
I really want this to be a BS rumor that will never come to be, but
with our current gov'ts policy of under-the-table law(bill) passing, anything goes.

TDX

its all over these forums

The bill is real and I believe it calls for more record keeping on checkride failures, I haven't read it so I can't comment in full, but I haven't heard that it would prevent upgrade or employment just more regular checking/observation of affected pilots. I know my airline has already instituted a "low time observation program" basically means if you've been at the company less than a year or in the airframe less than a year you get a line check... normally Fo's only recieve incidental line checks when they're with a captain receiving one.

There's several threads discussing the implications of this specific bill, with plenty of fun to read speculation.