US Carries Defend Pilot Pay After Buffalo Crash
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June 17 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. regional airline pilot pay is “fair and reasonable,” the head of the carriers’ trade group said, defending salaries under scrutiny after a fatal crash near Buffalo, New York.
Rebecca Shaw, 24, copilot of the Pinnacle Airlines Corp. Colgan plane that crashed, earned $23,900 a year, the carrier has said. Federal Aviation Administration chief Randy Babbitt questioned June 15 whether such pay attracts “the best and the brightest.”
Commuter carrier copilots on average earn $32,000, “in line with comparable professions,” Roger Cohen, president of the Regional Airline Association, told a Senate subcommittee today in Washington. He called pay in all parts of the industry, including regional carriers, “fair and reasonable.”
Lawmakers at the Senate aviation-panel hearing echoed questions raised during a National Transportation Safety Board hearing last month as to whether pilot pay at small carriers is adequate. It was Congress’s third hearing on aviation safety since June 10.
“We’re trying to do it on the cheap,” said Senator Mike Johanns, a Nebraska Republican. “We are hiring pilots at a very low wage.”
Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, called the pay “modest” and said that at $20,000, a pilot would be close to earning “minimum wage, for any kind of job.”
Such pay may force pilots to take second jobs, increasing the risk they show up for airline work tired, Lautenberg said.
Comparable Professions
Copilot pay is in line with comparable professions such as a paramedic or medical assistant, Cohen said. Captains at regional carriers earn an average of $76,000, he said. Pinnacle has said the average salary for a captain on the type of plane that crashed in Buffalo is $67,000.
Wage differences between major and regional carriers are as much as $70,000 for a captain and $50,000 for a first officer with five years of experience, John Prater, president of the Airline Pilots Association union, told the panel.
Pilot pay is a result of collective bargaining, James May, president of the Air Transport Association large carrier trade group in Washington.
“Neither legislation nor regulation can effectively peg what is the right compensation in such a system of negotiated wages, benefits, and working conditions,” May told the panel.
The Bombardier Inc. Dash 8 Q400 crashed Feb. 12 in Clarence Center, New York, as it approached Buffalo’s airport from Newark, New Jersey. The dead included one person on the ground and all 49 people on board the plane, which Colgan operated for Continental Airlines Inc.
The NTSB is examining whether the crew responded improperly to a stall warning, pulling the nose of the aircraft up, rather than pointing it down to increase speed. NTSB evidence shows the pilots let the plane lose more than a quarter of its airspeed in 21 seconds, setting off a cockpit stall warning.