Stupidity, thy name is the FAA

The New York Times has an article by Matthew Wald about the Colgan Air disaster:

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday told executives of Colgan Air, whose plane crashed outside Buffalo in February, that paying new pilots very low wages without taking into account that some would commute across the country to their jobs constituted “winking and nodding” at safety policy. Members of the board said that the crew of the twin-engine turboprop that crashed, killing all 49 people on board and one on the ground, was set up for fatigue and inattention before they even took off, partly because of the structure of the commuter airline business.
In the crash, the first officer, Rebecca Shaw, 24, a Colgan employee for about a year, apparently pulled an all-nighter to get a free transcontinental trip to work. She was living near Seattle and commuting to her job at Colgan’s operation in Newark, according to board investigators. She flew from Seattle to Memphis in a spare seat on one FedEx jet, and to Newark on another, planning to sleep in a crew lounge, investigators said. The airline said Wednesday evening that her rate of pay, for a minimum of 75 hours a month, was $23,900 a year.
The captain, Marvin Renslow, 47, who had been with Colgan since September of 2005, had flown to Newark from his Florida home the previous evening. He was logged on to a computer at 3 a.m.; investigators are not sure where he slept, but he was known to have sometimes used the crew lounge at Newark, even though the airline had threatened to fire pilots who used it for overnight stays. The average salary for a captain is $67,000, Colgan said.
The board on Wednesday held its second of three days of hearings on the 12 February crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air. The turboprop plummeted to the ground during its approach to Buffalo Niagara International Airport. While a final report is months away, broad recommendations seem likely, especially concerning fatigue.
A Federal Aviation Administration scientist, Tom Nesthus, testified that sleepy pilots were generally unable to judge the extent of their impairment, and likely to have trouble concentrating and following multiple sources of information. In the crash, the crew lost track of their deteriorating airspeed, and when a warning system activated, Captain Renslow reacted wrongly, pulling up the nose of the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 instead of pushing it down to regain airspeed and improve the angle of the wings. The plane went into a stall, meaning the combination of angle and speed left the wings unable to generate lift.
The acting chairman of the board, Mark Rosenker, said the company was “winking and nodding” about its pilots’ commuting practices. Another board member, Kathryn Higgins, said, “When you put together the commuting patterns, the pay levels, the fact that your crew rooms, that aren’t supposed to be used, are being used, I think it’s a recipe for an accident.”
Board investigators found that the crew lounge was, in fact, used inappropriately, and the airline recognized the problem with the practice. “It’s not quality rest,” Harry Mitchel, Colgan’s vice president for flight operations, testified. “There’s a lot of activity in our crew rooms.” A safety board member, Deborah Hersman, said Wednesday that Ms. Shaw had told one FedEx pilot that there was a “couch with my name on it” in the Colgan pilot’s lounge in Newark where she would sleep.
But Daniel Morgan, vice president for safety and regulatory performance at Colgan Air, said the airline had abided strictly by rules on how many hours a pilot could work in a shift, and how many hours were given between shifts, and could not control employees’ off-hours behavior. “You’re adults, you’re professionals, use the time we’ve given you to rest,” he said. Pilots could share apartments near the base, he said. Both pilots can be heard yawning on the cockpit voice recorder. Investigators found that Colgan’s pilots frequently live hundreds or thousands of miles from their crew base, and board members were openly skeptical that the two pilots were atypical. Mr. Rosenker, the acting chairman, said during a break in the hearing that he and his colleagues had not surveyed commuting practices at other commuter airlines, but that it might be revealing for the FAA, which licenses pilots and airlines, to do so.
At the hearing, Ms. Higgins asked, “What’s the nexus between commuting and fatigue?" "Boy, that’s difficult,” Mr. Mitchel answered, adding that the answer would depend on the individual.
Over two days of hearings, the airline has varied between protesting its blamelessness and asking for help. The company said it was trying to make sure pilots complied with its fatigue policy— including a requirement not to commute in by plane on the day a duty shift begins. On Tuesday it said Captain Renslow had lied on his job application by listing only one of the three times that he had failed a hands-on proficiency exam, called a check ride, and that the airline was hampered by insufficiencies in a federal law intended to help carriers gather information like that on job applicants. One company witness asked the board for help in getting Congress to change the laws.
But Colgan had not taken the step that some safety board experts pointed out, asking pilots to sign privacy waivers so the Federal Aviation Administration could divulge their records to the company. After Colgan hired Captain Renslow, he failed two more check rides, but eventually was certified to fly the Dash 8, the plane that crashed.
Colgan, like other commuter airlines, often has a high turnover in which employees spend only a year or two in low-paying entry-level jobs, a disincentive to live near the airline’s hub. “We look at it as a steppingstone,” said Mary Colgan Finnigan, the company’s vice president for administration, referring to a job at the company.
After the crash, the airline said it was also reviewing its sick leave policy. Ms. Shaw could be heard sneezing on the cockpit voice recorder, and at one point suggested to Captain Renslow that they seek permission from air traffic control to descend early because that would be more comfortable for her ears, which were stuffed. Pilots earn sick time at the rate of half a day a month, but calling in sick can often mean missing more than one day of work, since they are often assigned to two- or three-day trips.

Rico says for what it will cost them in lawsuits and insurance claims for a single crash, these airlines could rent nice dormitory apartments at every hub and require pilots to spend the night sleeping in a bed before they fly. As a passenger who puts himself in their hands, Rico says it's the least they could do, the cheap bastards...