Families groan, protest listening to Colgan exec : Home: The Buffalo News
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Family members of Continental Connection Flight 3407 today finally heard enough from Colgan Air’s executives stressing how their company values safety and how safe their flights are.
Mary Finnigan, Colgan’s vice president for administration, was greeted with audible moans and protests from the families during the second day of the National Transportation Safety Board’s hearing into the Feb. 12 crash.
Asked her personal standard in who she hires to undergo Colgan’s flight training, she said, “My personal standard is I would not sign off on any applicant that I personally would not want flying with my family in the back of an airplane.”
That proved too much for several families who have been sitting quietly during two days of testimony designed to explain why Flight 3407 crashed and took 50 lives, and their protests reached the dais where the questioners sit.
Acting NTSB chairman Mark Rosenker immediately interrupted the hearing, reminding audience members to respect the panelists.
It has been that kind of day as a number of Colgan executives have taken the stand and testified to their airline's policies, and what might and might not have led to Flight 3407’s crash.
Fatigue is one of the explanations offered on why Capt. Marvin Renslow and first officer Rebecca L. Shaw reacted as if they were startled when a stall warning sounded when they approached the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
Members of the NTSB questioned Finnigan and Harry Mitchel, Colgan’s vice president for flight operations, on Shaw’s 36-hour commute from her home in the state of Washington, a commute that ended in the early morning hours of the day of her flight to Buffalo.
Finnigan had earlier testified that Shaw, 24, made only $16,000 a year as a first officer, and that she had worked a second job in a Norfolk, Va., coffee shop before she switched duty stations from Norfolk to Newark, N.J.
Shaw, who had also recently moved home to Washington, faced a choice of cross-country commutes and sleeping in the crew room at the Newark airport — prohibited by company policy, or living in Newark.
Complete Buffalo News coverage of the crash of Flight 3407, including the days following the crash, the investigation and the lives of those who were lost.
How does someone making $16,000 a year afford to live in Newark? Colgan VP Mitchel was asked.
Mitchel replied that airline pilots for years had made do by sharing places, and that he viewed Colgan as a stepping stone for pilots looking to move up to a major carrier.
“I think it’s a recipe for an accident, and that’s what we have here," NTSB board member Kathy Higgins said.
Earlier today, Colgan Air said it has revised its pilot hiring standards in a way that would have disqualified someone as inexperienced as Renslow from being hired.
Under questioning from investigators, Finnigan acknowledged that when Renslow was hired, the minimum number of flight hours a pilot needed to be considered for hiring was 600 hours.
Since the Clarence crash, Colgan has boosted its minimum flying requirement for new pilots to 1,000 hours, Finnigan acknowledged.
That acknowledgment came a day after the transcript of the flight's cockpit voice recorder showed Renslow saying he had only 625 hours of flying time when Colgan hired him.
"Oh wow," the co-pilot, Rebecca Lynn Shaw, replied. "That's not much for, uh, back when you got hired."
Colgan officials also said that if they had known that Renslow failed to acknowledge on his job application that he had failed three federal "check flights," he would not have been hired.
Renslow acknowledged only one of those failures, but Colgan, hamstrung in part by a federal privacy law, never double-checked that part of his application with the Federal Aviation Administration.
Asked if Renslow "slipped under the radar" by getting hired at Colgan, Finnegan said no.
"I don't think he slipped in under the radar," she said. "We did our job."
Colgan officials also faced harsh questions about how much it pays its flight crews.
Investigator Roger Cox said his research showed Shaw only $16,254 a year.
Cox questioned whether that is enough for Colgan employees such as Shaw who are based in Newark.
"Did you expect her to reside in the New York metro area at that rate of pay?," he asked.
"We do not dictate where our employs want to live," replied Finnigan, saying Colgan's salaries are "industry standard."
Shaw commuted on an overnight flight from her home in Seattle before reporting to duty in Newark the day of the crash.
Hopefully this might start some initiative to move towards all of our causes...