NTSB: Pilot of Doomed Buffalo Plane 'Was Slow Learning' to Operate the Aircraft

[JC004]

Airline economics are a joke. The adage is still true, to make a small fortune in aviation start with a large one. Owning an airline must be extremely attractive, many have lost everything following that seductive mistress. That includes legacy carriers and startups. I don't have that looooooong list of former airlines. 

High fixed costs with unpredictable fuel prices and low fares that won't pay the bills results in a lot of red ink.

Does all of this result in less experienced crews, maybe.

Well, you have US Airways which declares bankruptcy once or twice a day, and most other airlines end up in the red at some point too.  Southwest is the ONLY airline that pulls a profit every single year.

[Rotorhead]

In order for you to fly $100 round trip, the airline has to cut expenses somewhere.  They generally choose paying their employees.

I am not a pilot, and the closest I come to running an airline is FS Economy. However I do know a thing or two about economics. Airlines have high fixed costs and low marginal costs. In other words, it costs a LOT of money to get an airplane from point A to point B, but once that's been paid for it costs very little to add another passenger.

The dilemma with an airline is that if everybody paid $100 for a ticket, you would never cover the fixed costs. But if you charged more, then less people would buy tickets, and you still would not cover the fixed costs. So what you have to do is leverage the low marginal costs, and you do that by introducing price discrimination.

For example, while I may have paid $100 for my ticket, the guy sitting next to me probably paid more. Why is that? Well, the airline would rather sell me one of their leftover seats for $100 rather than let it go empty. And that really is the alternative because for a lot of people who buy those low fare tickets, the alternative is to simply not go at all.

That is why even if you did force higher prices with regulation, you simply would not solve the financial problems because you would not be able to fill the airplanes.

And even if you did manage to increase profits with regulated pricing. That won't magically increase the flight crew's salaries. Labor works on supply and demand too, and the way in which airlines are able to pay their pilots low wages is because there are so many pilots willing to fly for them.

It's a crummy situation. The only thing you can really do is evaluate if pilots overall are safe, and if they are not, raise the licensing standards.

If you ever fly with me, come on up, I will gladly show you my certs (never failed any checkride), take a look at the maint logs, heck I will even escort you for your own walk around.

I respect your willingness toward openness, but it sort of misses the point. Byt the time I board your plane, I've already purchased my ticket. Now, if we could get the airlines to publish all of that along with the flights...and I could choose to either save $20 and fly with a guy who failed two of his last three check rides, or fly with you. And if I still chose to save the $20: At that point I would say you could blame the customer.

Or we could go further back and blame it on deregulation.

Because there was a time when airfares covered the costs of the flight and also made it possible to pay pilots an adult salary.

Now, however, we have NY to LA flights that actually net the company under $50 profit because consumers have been taught that low prices and fare wars are in their best interest.

And how would higher fares be in their best interest?

Because with fares that cover costs, the airlines don't have to cut corners to make a profit or hire low-time pilots and give them OJT (hour-building) with an aircraft full of passengers.

[N Harmon]

Because with fares that cover costs, the airlines don't have to cut corners to make a profit or hire low-time pilots and give them OJT (hour-building) with an aircraft full of passengers.

But there is a flaw with that reasoning. You are assuming that the passengers all have low price elasticity, and that they will continue to demand tickets regardless of the higher fares. But in reality, that is only true for a small segment of an airline's customer base. Most of their customers have moderate to high price elasticity.

What this means in english is that a good number of those passengers simply won't buy tickets at the higher price. They'll either drive, or vacation somewhere else. The result will be planes that fly near empty.

[Spike]

Because with fares that cover costs, the airlines don't have to cut corners to make a profit or hire low-time pilots and give them OJT (hour-building) with an aircraft full of passengers.

Hmm.....maybe we should not be paying airline pilots hundreds of thousands of dollars??

10 years ago USAIR(WAYS) paid pilots with 5 years of service to the company $101,000

It is never the passengers fault, it is poor management, unions, and pilots that hurt airlines.

[Rotorhead]

Because with fares that cover costs, the airlines don't have to cut corners to make a profit or hire low-time pilots and give them OJT (hour-building) with an aircraft full of passengers.

Hmm.....maybe we should not be paying airline pilots hundreds of thousands of dollars??

10 years ago USAIR(WAYS) paid pilots with 5 years of service to the company $101,000

It is never the passengers fault, it is poor management, unions, and pilots that hurt airlines.

I'm not really saying it is.

I am saying that, thanks to deregulation, airlines have taught them to expect unrealistically low fares--and thus they can't pay for experienced pilots any longer.

And I don't believe that higher airfares across the board would cause people to stop flying. That sounds like an airline marketing rep speaking.

[MikeD]

I hate to say it but here it is.  As an engineer working a split between NASA Fundamental Aeronautics and Aviation Safety, between what I see personally and what I hear from other NASA coworkers, I feel much much safer flying backseat in one of the first F-15s ever made, or even in an F-18 older then me, on some kind of crazy mission only NASA would do, then I do flying commercial on a long-haul, let alone regional. 

Not the fault of the pilots, just a fault of the system as a whole.  When NASA or the AF does an investigation, there's the safety investigation where individual testimony is privileged and no one person is going to get a sensitive body part nailed to the wall.   That lets us find out what actually happened and fix the problem rather then worry about who to pin the blame on.  Until we can get a system like that in place for all of the incidents and close calls in commercial aviation, things will be in bad shape since we won't know what to fix. 

[DG]

Because with fares that cover costs, the airlines don't have to cut corners to make a profit or hire low-time pilots and give them OJT (hour-building) with an aircraft full of passengers.

Hmm.....maybe we should not be paying airline pilots hundreds of thousands of dollars??

10 years ago USAIR(WAYS) paid pilots with 5 years of service to the company $101,000

It is never the passengers fault, it is poor management, unions, and pilots that hurt airlines.

And six years ago Airways went Bankrupt.

What's your point?

[JC004]

I'm not really saying it is.

I am saying that, thanks to deregulation, airlines have taught them to expect unrealistically low fares--and thus they can't pay for experienced pilots any longer.

And I don't believe that higher airfares across the board would cause people to stop flying. That sounds like an airline marketing rep speaking.

There's quite a number of factors here, unions included.  Higher fares would create quite a market adjustment with a reduced number of flights and could significantly impact quantities of passengers.  As discussed here, the profit margin is already thin.  I know of an airline born of deregulation that doesn't crash airplanes into the ground.

[PHall]

I'm not really saying it is.

I am saying that, thanks to deregulation, airlines have taught them to expect unrealistically low fares--and thus they can't pay for experienced pilots any longer.

And I don't believe that higher airfares across the board would cause people to stop flying. That sounds like an airline marketing rep speaking.

There's quite a number of factors here, unions included.  Higher fares would create quite a market adjustment with a reduced number of flights and could significantly impact quantities of passengers.  As discussed here, the profit margin is already thin.  I know of an airline born of deregulation that doesn't crash airplanes into the ground.

No, they just run off the ends of runways. And they did it twice! (MDY and BUR)

Not even "well run" airlines are exempt from people being stupid.

[JC004]

That's a pretty good record, me thinks.  I think at least the one was ice IIRC.  I don't know that I'd want to be skidding around in something that big on ice.  Sounds a bit scary.  I am willing to (and do) put my life on that record nonetheless.  I think having big monopolies in airlines is a bigger threat since they would be huge and untouchable (and acting accordingly). 

[PHall]

That's a pretty good record, me thinks.  I think at least the one was ice IIRC.  I don't know that I'd want to be skidding around in something that big on ice.  Sounds a bit scary.  I am willing to (and do) put my life on that record nonetheless.  I think having big monopolies in airlines is a bigger threat since they would be huge and untouchable (and acting accordingly).

I've been in aircraft that land on ice runways (C-141C @ Mc Murdo Station, Antarctica), it's not a big thing if you touchdown at the charted touchdown speed and follow the procedures for landing on slick runways.

The two incidents referred to above both have one common cause, touched down at least 10-15 knots fast and did not aggressively attempt to slow the aircraft.
This is as per the NTSB reports.

Landing on a slick runway is one time when you do not want a "grease job" landing.
You want to plant the tires so that they can get some friction with the runway surface right away so your wheel brakes will be effective.

Because, to paraphrase an old statement, one of the most useless things in the world is runway behind you.

[heliodoc]

Whether or not folks "wanna" read the life as recorded by the 121 operators

I strongly encourage the CAP er community to READ the ASRS reports in the 121 category

Whether or not folks want to call the reports sour grapes because of "attitude" or what not........

This gives a pretty good synopsis about the life of the regionals whether or not they are "experienced" aircrews or not

This will give valuable insights that whether or not these folks are 250 hr wonders or 6000 hr regional drivers...

CAPer drivers can assume and speculate all about this subject........But the pilots writing 121 "astronaut forms" can not be wrong, high timers or low timers

These folks are "PROFESSIONALS."  Just as professional as any CAP aircrew

[JohnKachenmeister]

^ I agree!  Well put.

The media was quick to blame the pilot.  What a terrible blow to his family, and all the families that lost someone on this flight.  I strongly believe the transcripts should never be released, except to the Government Officials and the immediate families of the victims.  There are already too many videos on the internet making fun of tragedies like this. 

What in the world would be the last words out of your mouth when you know you have a second to live. 

Stupid media, stupid government for reporting on it like they currently do.

One simple statement as to what happened, why it happened and how others can prevent it from happening again is all that is needed.  Everything else is opinion and belief, not fact.

Sometimes the Government and the News Media are such an embarrassment.

I love media types who have never touched the controls of an airplane telling us that a pilot was unqualified.

Or a reporterette with zero days of active military duty and who never read the Geneva Convention telling us about how to handle prisoners from Afghanistan

Or the media freak who has never touched a gun or ever been in a fistfight telling us that the police over-reacted in a gun battle, and should have shot more accurately.

My personal life experience forces me to put media types below lawyers in the "Chain of Disrespect."  Frankly, I believe very little of what they say, since they usually have no idea of what they are talking about.

[bosshawk]

Kach: I'm with you all the way.  I had my personal falling out with the media when I was in VN in 1966.  They were lying and mis-reporting stuff back then and refusing to admit that they were writing stories about combat operations from the luxury of a hotel veranda in Saigon.  The ones who write about aviation are usually the newest and least experienced of the bunch.  Their knowledge of flying stops at the airliner door the last time that they flew somewhere.  But: oh boy, are they experts??

[flyguy06]

^ I agree!  Well put.

The media was quick to blame the pilot.  What a terrible blow to his family, and all the families that lost someone on this flight.  I strongly believe the transcripts should never be released, except to the Government Officials and the immediate families of the victims.  There are already too many videos on the internet making fun of tragedies like this. 

What in the world would be the last words out of your mouth when you know you have a second to live. 

Stupid media, stupid government for reporting on it like they currently do.

One simple statement as to what happened, why it happened and how others can prevent it from happening again is all that is needed.  Everything else is opinion and belief, not fact.

Sometimes the Government and the News Media are such an embarrassment.

I love media types who have never touched the controls of an airplane telling us that a pilot was unqualified.

Or a reporterette with zero days of active military duty and who never read the Geneva Convention telling us about how to handle prisoners from Afghanistan

Or the media freak who has never touched a gun or ever been in a fistfight telling us that the police over-reacted in a gun battle, and should have shot more accurately.

My personal life experience forces me to put media types below lawyers in the "Chain of Disrespect."  Frankly, I believe very little of what they say, since they usually have no idea of what they are talking about.

well John,

I have touched the controls and I know somthing about pursuing an airline career and I can tell you thatthere a lot of pilots out there that are not qualified to flying a Regional jet full of passengers. Airlines last year were hiring folks with 500 hours total time. Thats ridiculously low. These kids just graudted fromcollege and flightinstructed to build enough time to get on with a regional.

I think a lot of times the media reports stories inaccuratly, btu a lot of times, they get it dead on. In this case I am glad that the non pilot public has been exposed to what regional pilots go through and he qualityof pilots airlines are hiring. Maybe airlines will change their standards and stop paying new hires $18,000. You get what you pay for.

[Gunner C]

There were several things that put that plane in the dirt, and none of them by themselves was fatal (subject to the final NTSB report).  But that's the way it is with aviation accidents.  It's the chain of events that killed those people.

The airlines can mitigate the danger, but there will always be a confluence of events that will cause another tragedy.  The economics, pilot experience, wx, mx, traffic, controller experience, and even the ride to the airport all play a part.  Until every factor is removed (impossible) there will be accidents. 

We can only make them farther apart.  That's what the media doesn't get.

[N Harmon]

And I don't believe that higher airfares across the board would cause people to stop flying. That sounds like an airline marketing rep speaking.

It would cause me to stop flying. And I doubt I would be alone in that. What makes you believe otherwise? It seems to me that you're having a hard time reconciling basic economic principles with your own personal world view. Marketing rep speaking? Feh.

Airlines last year were hiring folks with 500 hours total time. Thats ridiculously low.

How is it ridiculously low? It doesn't seem so ridiculous if we're talking first officers, but that may just be me. Do you have any facts that support this? Like, how often it is the 500 hour pilots getting into accidents versus the multi-thousand hour pilots? I took a look at some domestic incidents in the past 7-8 years and it looked like every single one involved pilots with multi-thousand hours.

Perhaps safety isn't so directly proportional to flight experience. Perhaps there is a point around 2,000 hours where a pilot assumes he/she knows everything and thus lets his/her guard down.

Maybe airlines will change their standards and stop paying new hires $18,000. You get what you pay for.

Maybe. But as long as there are people who love to fly and are willing to do it for $18,000/year, the salaries will probably follow that supply curve.

[flynd94]

Well, I guess you should enjoy driving then.  If you compare the price of a current ticket (NYC-LAX) to pre-deregulation prices you will see the problem.  Adjusted for inflation, it is cheaper to fly today then it was then.  The price of tickets has not kept up with inflation.  Americans want everything cheap but, don't realize that there are repercussions to this need.  Maybe all professional pilots should stage a walk out... wait American Airlines tried that but, Pres. Clinton ordered them back to work.  Labor has no muscle, the ball is in/has been in mgmt's court for years. 

500 hours in a cockpit is scary, even if its a FO.  They are supposed to be able to assist the CA in flying the aircraft.  My friends at different regional airlines that are CA's complain about the lack of airmanship of the new FO's.  They warn me that being in the left seat (CA) is like being a flight instructor again.  As a new CA, I am not looking forward to that.  I don't want to be flying single pilot again (spent time as a freight dog).

For the gentleman who thinks SWA is the cat's meow.  They have their own problems now.  The last 2 quarters they have been unprofitable.  They had an advantage for decades because they didn't have any legacy costs (salaries/pensions).  Well, the cat has come home to roost.  Plus, their fuel hedging advantage has ended.  I have many friends over at SWA that are truly concerned about their future.  Also, as PHall stated landing on an icy runway isn't that tough.  Plant the darn plane, put it down in the touchdown zone and you are fine.  Read the NTSB reports on their issues.

Finally, here is my personal rant.  What you are seeing with the airlines is what I like to call the "Wal Martization of America".  We all want everything dirt cheap but, with all the bennies.  Pretty soon the USA will not be the world leader in anything.  JMHO

[N Harmon]

I do enjoy driving although it helps having an automobile that is enjoyable to drive. But let's be clear, for a lot of destinations the choice is clearly to fly. And what factors into that, in large part for most customers, is the price. To say that the demand for air travel is so inelastic as to not respond to pricing differences, is a sure fire way to go out of business.

Adjusted for inflation, it is cheaper to fly today then it was then. The price of tickets has not kept up with inflation.

Well, I would question why we would expect flying to stay the same in terms of inflation-adjusted costs. Why wouldn't we expect the prices to go down as they have in other areas?

Americans want everything cheap but, don't realize that there are repercussions to this need.

Honestly? It isn't just Americans. And the fault of their (our) ignorance on the repercussions of flying discount airlines isn't entirely our own. The system as a whole is designed to give the consumer an impression of universal safety with the only disparity being price. In such a situation why wouldn't you expect customers to simply fly the cheaper airline.

500 hours in a cockpit is scary, even if its a FO.

I have not found a single domestic airline fatality where the PIC or SIC was a 500 hour boy wonder. I will admit that I only looked at a handful of cases in the past 8 years or so, but still. Where are the numbers?

And if a pilot isn't ready at 500 hours, then perhaps the licensing standards need to be higher. Again, not really something the consumer has control over.

Finally, here is my personal rant.  What you are seeing with the airlines is what I like to call the "Wal Martization of America".  We all want everything dirt cheap but, with all the bennies.  Pretty soon the USA will not be the world leader in anything.  JMHO

The USA does not have to be the world leader in anything, nor is it a tragedy if it is not the world leader in everything. "Wal-martization"? Meh. I happen to like Wal-Mart.

[Rotorhead]

"Wal-martization"? Meh. I happen to like Wal-Mart.

I think I get it now.

You want everything to be cheap. You seem to believe there is no correlation between the cost of a product or service and its quality.

Pull your head out of the sand.

You really do get what you pay for in this world.