Colgan warned by FAA about safety prior to 3407 crash - City & Region - The Buffalo News


Six months before Colgan Air’s Continental Connection Flight 3407 tumbled from the sky and crashed into a home in Clarence, killing 50 people, a key federal aviation official delivered a stern message to Colgan executives.“I have very serious concerns about the safety culture at Colgan Air,” Nick Scarpinato, director of the Federal Aviation Administration’s flight standards office in Herndon, Va., told executives of the regional airline, according to Dan Morgan, the former vice president of safety and compliance at the regional airline.......

....and half a decade later, virtually all the REAL problems that led to this accident are still in existance. The crowds and cameras have left Capital Hill and Congress has returned to their afternoon naps. Business as usual..........at least unitl the next time.

Morgan was also the VP of Flight Ops for Pinnacle until being ousted in exchange for Joe Restifo.

It's ironic that the continental guy went to a regional and called it low rent when the 80's to the current merger many people considered CAL as the low rent major. Not trying to stir the pot. Just saying everyone has their perspective. I've never worked at either airline so I couldn't really say if either opinion is accurate.

But every airline is in a constant squeeze for profits. They always press pilots to work more, earn less and provide less benefits. CAL wouldn't pay health care to new hires for 6 months. The constant is managements desire for profits over safety. And the strengh of the pilot group to overcome it. And how did the FAA get out of blame here. In the years I've been in this business they've always seemed impotent and therefore over reactive. Are they cheerleaders or inspectors?

In a nutshell....

It was a terrible place......I'll cherish those days where we were asked to sleep in cold hangars while they Jerry-rigged an airplane for us to fly people on the next morning. World class operation

“It was very – I hate to use the pejorative term – low rent,” Morgan said. “It was really a shoestring operation.”

"So, too, were the pilots. With the airline industry starting to run short on experienced pilots leaving the military and regionals like Colgan paying less than half what pilots would make at the major airlines, Morgan noticed that some of the Colgan pilots were not the same caliber as those at Continental."

I wonder if be same could be said about Republic. RAH pretty much took over Colgan's Q operation. The IBT at Republic also tried and failed to install the top 300 lifers into the Airbus captain seats at F9 during the whole failed "merger" fiasco.

RAH is running the Q operation and for that matter their entire airline in exactly the same way that Colgan operated. So really no change there. As far as the 300 lifers, many of them should not be flying anything that carries passengers. Many of the lifers were so bad that they had been repeatedly rejected by the majors over the years, hence the term "lifer." When I was at RAH I was told by several captains that they would personally refuse to deadhead on a flight operated by certain RAH pilots because they did not trust their flying abilities. I also witnessed a female captain who was my simulator partner for a PC perform in such a disturbingly poor manner that it made me scared to ever be a passenger on any of her flights.

It's almost scary to think that these same inept individuals that are unhireable by any reputable airline feel entitled to slide right into a captain seat at a major. Isn't it true that the union president himself was terminated for busting multiple check rides? Yeah, that's exactly who I'd want flying my family around.

C'mon guys lets get back on track and quit bashing rah pilots. It's the Colgan guys and gals that can't fly.