As regional carriers dominate travel, safety is big concern

Nearly a year ago, a Colgan Air turboprop plane flying as Continental Connection Flight 3407 crashed during bad weather near Buffalo Niagara International Airport in New York, killing 50 people.

The Feb. 12 crash of Flight 3407, which raised questions about the flight crew's fatigue, qualifications and training, focused aviation-safety officials' attention on the nation's regional airlines.

In the past five years, only three U.S. airliners on scheduled flights have been involved in fatal crashes, but all were operated by the regional airlines that have grown to dominate passenger service at many airports.

And with the exception of the crashes during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, five of the six major airline crashes with passenger fatalities since Jan. 1, 2001, have involved regional airlines, National Transportation Safety Board records show. One was the 2006 Comair crash in Lexington, Ky., that killed 49 people.

"This is an area that needs to be addressed, from records to training to rest periods," Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., and a member of the Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said in an interview.

According to the Regional Airline Association in Washington, which speaks for its member companies, the regionals serve 650 communities across the country; in 442 of those communities -- 70 percent -- regional airlines provide the only scheduled service.

At many others, regionals carry the most passengers. For example, 17 regional airlines now provide 70 percent of the flights at Virginia’s Richmond International Airport and carry more than half the passengers, according to figures from the Capital Region Airport Commission. The regional airline presence at RIC has increased steadily over the past five years.

Last year regionals carried nearly 160 million people nationally, about 20 percent of all U.S. air travelers.

Almost a year after the Buffalo crash, the Federal Aviation Administration last week issued a report laying out the agency's initial actions to improve pilot training and to develop an effective pilot-fatigue rule.

"This report is a snapshot of our work, which is by no means finished," FAA Administrator J. Randolph Babbitt said in a statement. "We will continue to aggressively push forward with these initiatives that we believe will raise the safety bar even higher."

"The big thing is fatigue," FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette said. "That's a major concern that [Babbitt] has as a former airline pilot."

The FAA will publish new proposed rules governing crew rest this spring, and the agency is in the process of rewriting airline training regulations, she said.

"We're looking at improving pilot performance -- the quality, not just the quantity," Duquette said. "We want to make sure pilots are trained . . . in the scenarios they fly in."

Meanwhile, the Airline Safety and Pilot Training Improvement Act of 2009, which would tighten the qualifications, records, crew-rest and training requirements for air-carrier pilots, has passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is under consideration by the Senate.

Regional airlines already are implementing most of the safety improvements embodied in the proposed legislation and suggested some that were put into the bill, said Roger Cohen, president of the Washington-based Regional Airline Association.

The association, however, is not in favor of the bill's provision that would require new hires to have logged at least 1,500 hours of flight time.

"The quality of hours is way more important than quantity of hours," Cohen said. Building pilot time by flying light airplanes "doesn't really train anyone to fly modern, sophisticated aircraft in complex airspace, in commercial service."

The regionals have transitioned from flying piston-powered aircraft in the 1970s to more-reliable small and medium-sized turboprop planes in the 1980s to new, largely jet aircraft in the 1990s.

The average regional airliner is now a 54-passenger turbine-powered plane flying trips of 461 miles, or just about the distance from Richmond to Atlanta.

"Unequivocally, the safety performance of these planes, the jets themselves, now a decade into their being introduced into service, has been outstanding," said George E. Hoffer, a transportation expert at Virginia Commonwealth University. "It's been flawless, absolutely flawless."

While most safety incidents reported by regional carriers are relatively minor -- flight attendants injured in turbulence, a mechanical problem or planes brushing wingtips during tight taxiing on airfields -- some illustrate issues confronting airlines and air-safety officials.

On April 12, 2007, a Pinnacle Airlines jet ran off the end of the runway after landing at Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City, Mich., during a snowstorm. No passengers or crew members were hurt, but the plane, a Canadair Regional Jet, sustained substantial damage.

The National Transportation Safety Board said that part of the crash's cause was the pilots' poor decision-making, likely reflecting the effects of fatigue from a long, demanding duty day.

The NTSB also said the Federal Aviation Administration's pilot flight and duty-time regulations, which permitted the pilots to become so fatigued, contributed to the mishap.

An Air Wisconsin jet ran off the runway at T.F. Green Airport in Rhode Island on Dec. 16, 2007, after a landing so hard it collapsed one of the plane's main landing gear. Again, no one was injured in the mishap.

Among the factors contributing to the incident, the NTSB said, was the lack of effective oversight by the company and the FAA to ensure co-pilots had adequate training and experience for airline operations.

Regional airline crews generally are younger, have less experience and are paid less than crews on the mainline carriers, though they have to meet the FAA's standards for airline pilot certification and training.

For instance, mainline carrier Delta Air Lines wants its pilot applicants to have a minimum of 1,200 hours of total flight time and at least 1,000 hours flying high-performance turbine-powered aircraft. But to be considered for a co-pilot interview with regional airline American Eagle, applicants only need more than 500 hours of flight time.

Both airlines require that applicants hold at least an FAA commercial pilot's license and be rated to fly on instruments.

Today, the average regional-airline captain has more than 8,500 hours of flight time, said the Regional Airline Association's Cohen. Co-pilots average about 3,100 hours, and newly hired regional-airline pilots average more than 1,300 hours.

"The best safety feature of any airplane is a well-trained, well-rested, highly motivated pilot," said Captain John Prater, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents nearly 54,000 pilots in the United States and Canada.

Carriers must view training as an investment paying dividends over time, not a cost to be kept to the bare minimum, Prater said.

"Twenty years ago," regional carriers "were simply unsafe," said John J. Nance, a Seattle-based attorney, former airline pilot and air-safety analyst. "Where we are today is totally different."

"For the [regional airline] business, good safety is good business," Cohen said.