Cool, then this is your hobby, and you like to stir the pot and be taken seriously as if you have a clue anymore. You do not have a vested interest in being a professional pilot clearly so you just rant and rave about what you think is right.

It's hard to argue with someone who is so irrational as to spend so much money becoming a professional pilot only to throw it all away after a short period of time. You didn't even make captain at a regional and you quit! Obviously you didn't have the slightest inkling of what you were getting yourself into.

Gotcha. Alrighty then.

Actually my first post was filled with beer and sarcasm.
You (Too Beaucoup) may actually be interested in safety, if that was your intent with the first post, and that's great. All airlines preach it.
But how many CEO's practice what they preach?
We would all only fly 5 hours a day. 3 days a week if it was economicaly viable. But it isn't so we have FAR's that have us legally working for 16hrs. OK our contract says 15. I have gone up to 15 hours, 4 times last year. It isn't safe. But it's legal. And that is all that the airlines care about.
One seniority list would be more expensive so it isn't going to happen.

Actually - I learned to fly for the fun of it. My training was always sourced in a deep personal love for aviation. Whether I sit in a jet on someone else's terms for a career or do something else and fly for fun has no bearing on whether I feel I got my money's worth.

Additionally, I started flying in 1998 at 16 years old. I spread the costs over a matter of 8 or 9 years and came out the end debt free with parallel training in another field (recommended to me at the time by pilots galore). My go at the airlines was begun with eyes wide open, skeptical the whole time from what I had heard from others in it.

I did it until I had a furlough notice in one hand and a displacement notice in the other and decided that getting displaced for 2 months only to get kicked on the street wasn't in my best interest. I chose to grab the reigns myself and go a different direction.

Do I miss it? Yes. In some ways. I did have the time of my life, made lots of friends, etc. Much of it sucked too. I felt and still feel all of what you described in your original post and completely agree with the fact that the current state of affairs is VERY subpar. However, based on direct observation and a fairly learned understanding of business affairs, it appears to me that this industry isn't headed where we want it to go and I honestly think that once one pulls out of the rat race, the viewpoint shifts to, perhaps, a more holistic view of the situation, rather than the pilot centrist view only (a valid view, but one of many different views that affect the path of things).

Except some of the money that should be going to pay higher interest rates or dividends ARE being paid in interest/fees to the smaller,local banks for overnight loans so that the big banks can make their FDIC min cash requirement....I think :D

You should do your homework before posting. This idea was actually first brought to the floor back in 1996, but it wasn't driven by safety, but rather bargaining power and economics. Ironically, it was rejected then by the same pilot group that now wants it because they are witnessing the demise of what was then a great airline.

You wanna talk about safety? How about we start with the baseline? How about we start with the agency tasked with enforcing the standards? You see, all naive one, you could have one seniority list industry-wide, or airline-wide, but if there's no element of corporate accountability, then safety won't improve. Colgan 3407 didn't happen because of two pilots, it happened because of the lack of safety culture at Colgan, and the FAA simply looked the other way. If you would just stop letting your ego speak for you, and take the time to see that we operate in a heavily regulated industry without an element of enforcement at the corporate level, then maybe just maybe you would see that you're trying to address the symptom and not the disease.

If you need anymore reference material here are couple of links for you:

FAA inspectors: Southwest tried to hide safety problems - CNN.com

FRONTLINE: flying cheap: watch the full program | PBS

goaround

It really doesn't surprise me that the idea has been brought to the "floor" before. I did not claim it as original.

Well at least this unnamed pilot group is finally catching on! I wasn't around when my generation was sold out for a few bucks!

By the way, which airline are you talking about? This subject is not airline specific in the slightest.

What about the FAA? They are in bed with the airlines? Yes obviously, and this is no surprise to anyone. Your wording is very vague, sorry if I am not "reading" you.

There would be corporate accountability if the "corporate" folks were liable for every airplane, pilot, and flight that was operated. The way to do this is regulation. By regulation I mean require a company selling tickets for a "ride" on their certificate using their name, disallowing other companies to do business as, and using pilots trained by said company, on a single seniority list as to not allow for a lack of training, or transfer of knowledge through experience in the cockpit with seasoned pilots.

My original post really wasn't about dissecting why Colgan crashed an airplane, but since you want to go there.. Colgan hired a guy who pulled back on the controls, and every pilot who was involved in checking, and instructing this individual could share just as much blame as Colgan the company or the FAA for looking the other way. It is quite obvious some pilots in a position to prevent an accident and encourage a safer operation LOOKED THE OTHER WAY when it came to this particular captain.

There is no question that safety isn't taken that seriously at Colgan. It may have never been an issue had Continental not been able to outsource flying to a contractor, obviously.



You're the one posting a bunch of non-sense about how you want to see enforcement at the corporate level at the same time as stating the obvious that we operate in a heavily regulated business. Airlines get fined all the time. What more do you want? Would you like people to be arrested? Banished from aviation? Do you want to write people tickets with a little ticket book? Go start a THERE MUST BE ENFORCEMENT AT THE CORPORATE LEVEL thread.

The disease is pitting pilots against pilots, and disrupting the flow of knowledge, and experience between generations of pilots because of large gaps in levels of experience at the regionals and the major/legacies.

The solution is getting everyone at a particular operation under the same tent. No it isn't going to be easy, in fact it may not even be possible considering folks like you are in the way. Someday though, it may happen, but until then we are stuck with what we have been left with by those who came before us.

You wrote a two page referendum, trying to make it sound like you discovered the answer to the industry's safety problems without knowing the background, clearly speaks to your credibility or lack thereof.

No they're doing it out of self-interest, no regard for safety. You should do a little research on the subject.

No, once again you're wrong; you're wrongly assuming that safety is directly related to the level of experience. While experience is an important element in the equation, training and safety culture are the key ingredients; both which are driven by corporate culture.

In other words (I'll make it easy for you since you can't grasp it), if you don't have corporate accountability for the safety culture and training at any carrier, it won't matter how much experience you bring to the table.

So like Mr Cohen from the RAA, you blame the pilots for this accident, and dismiss the fact that the absence of a safety culture at Colgan led to the accident itself...WOW! You must be a college student playing X-BOX, because even a private pilot can read an accident report and connect the dots. The bigger problem though, is that the feds knew all along and they looked the other way, which clearly illustrates the point that a single list won't have as much impact into safety, if you don't have regulatory compliance and enforcement at the corporate level. This whole concept is encapsulated by Safety Management Systems (SMS), I suggest you do a little reading into it, because a single seniority list won't fix the problem, but SMS might if it's done correctly.


Clearly the whole concept is above your head. You shouldn't start threads if you can't accept different points of view. It really strikes to your credibility or lack thereof.

The ICAO organization has identified corporate culture as the disease, hence it has imposed a deadline for all carriers around the world to comply with SMS by 2012. I tend to take the folks who manage and measure safety a lot more serious than an anonymous poster who is probably just a college kid with a private license pretending to know what his talking about.

Single seniority list in any shape or form is a bargaining tool, not the holy grail of safety.