Do you think that the major airlines sub-contract out their flying to the regionals because the regional folks are simply nice people? Follow the money (or lack of it)!

 

You mean like landing a 767 on a taxiway?

 

you probably should read the CVR of 3701 before trying to make that comparison...

 

I was about to say. I guarantee you for every regional incident you can recall, we can do the same with the majors, if not twice as much. It isn't a competition and this thread wasn't meant for it to be.

 

Never flown 8 but 7 leg days were not uncommon at chq pre 117.

 

That's a good point but to play devils advocate, there was a pretty idiotic happening with SWA at LaGuardia not long ago and it's pretty tough to compare that CVR with any other because..... no one is allowed to see it.

Screw ups happen everywhere - even unimaginably crazy ones.

 

Yeah, you're not going to talk about how great your replacement workers are.

That said, stupid happens at every airline. At NWA we had a crew disciplined for flying over lake Michigan at less than 100 feet, at 300 kts+ on a repo flight once.

 

Depends. I doubt they were calling each other "dudes" on the CVR.


Is the NTSB not going to release a transcript of the CVR of SWA at LGA? I thought they were required to. Does it fall under FOIA?

 

I think it is a fair and accurate statement to say regional airlines aren't as safe. It doesn't mean they are UNsafe, it just means it just isn't as safe as the legacy/majors. A huge part of the reason already mentioned is the far greater number of cycles regional pilots go through each day. 4-6 legs per day is common whereas the mainline counterpart may only do 1-3. The likeliness of an accident goes for the higher frequency of takeoff/landings and that is found moreso in the regionals. And of course the accident stats speak for themselves for at least this century. Since 2000, the major pax carriers had one AS MD80 go down, (excluding 9/11 due to terrorist - on purpose), and the AA A300. That's over 14 years so far. The regional comparison on the other hand includes nearly three times as many fatal crashes over the same period. Air Midwest at CLT, Corporate Air at Kirksville, Ocean Chalk near FLL, Comair at LEX, Colgan at BUF. Those are off the top of my head, I may have missed some.

 

The thing about the FOIA...someone has to ask for it.