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Aviation Safety in America & The Crash of Flight 3407

Locations in this article:  Buffalo, NY

Flight 3407 MemorialIf you saw the CBS Evening News last week, you saw my segment on the state of air safety in America. It aired on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the crash of Continental Flight 3407 near Buffalo, New York.

In the process of covering that story, I met a remarkable man. Scott Maurer lost his daughter, Lorin, in that crash, and he’s now spearheading a very powerful advocate group of families who also lost someone in that crash.

They’re trying to get some movement on some much-needed air safety improvements in America.

Peter Greenberg: I know this was a tough weekend for you.

Scott Maurer: We had mixed emotions. We walked from the crash site to the airport to complete the journey for our loved ones. That was something we had strong feelings about and it was quite emotional. The other part was that while this walk was to honor our loved ones, it was also a march toward fighting for advocacy to make changes in aviation safety.

CBS Evening News with Katie Couric logoPG: In the one year since that terrible tragedy in which 50 people lost their lives, when you look at the final report from the National Transportation Safety Board—and you and I were both at that hearing in Washington, DC—it is quite clear that we had some serious pilot training issues, pilot fatigue issues, and truth in advertising issues. With only 190 flying hours, I could become a pilot for one of these regional carriers, when it’s really the standard of 1,500 hours at the major mainline carriers.

SM: We certainly do. It’s scary, isn’t it?

Don’t miss the CBS Evening News Special Report: Aviation Safety in America.

PG: It certainly is. When we look at the history of the crew, the pilot sitting in the left seat had failed five separate examples and yet Colgan Air hired that guy. The co-pilot, who was making an average salary that was equivalent of a Wal-Mart greeter, even admitted on the cockpit voice recorder that she didn’t even know what she was doing up there. She was tired, she was sick, she had taken two red-eye flights just to get to the location where she picked up her flight. And, of course, when they encountered the problem of icing while they were on auto-pilot, they did the exact wrong thing: they pulled up.

Experienced pilot Chesley SullenbergerSM: That’s correct. I don’t want people to be afraid to climb on an airplane, but I do want people to make an informed decision. For most people climbing on the large, major carriers, you’ll see what we refer to as the “gray in the cockpit.” You’ll see pilots who are a little balding, some gray hair. These pilots have 3,000-plus hours of experience before they can even get hired. But we’re looking at the more recently developed hub-and-spoke system that the airline industry is using, here’s where the problem comes in: at the regional airline level where these smaller planes—50-70 passengers that essentially transport customers from smaller airports to larger airports—there’s where we’re seeing hiring practices and inexperience of pilots, particularly in the right seat. One of the things we advocate is: let’s get the skill level and the qualification level up to what’s comparable of what we see in the major airlines.

Learn more with: Buffalo Crash Probe Raises Training & Safety Questions About Regional Flights

PG: One year after the crash, even though we’re seeing recommendations on that, we’re seeing legislation on that, we’re still talking a number of years before we can get to that.

FAA LogoSM: That’s very true. These rules are typically put into place by the FAA. The history of the FAA is that it moves at a glacial pace. These folks are much more aligned with the airline industry than it is with the American flying public. We’re going to continue working with the FAA because not everything we want put into place can be handled by Congress. But what we have done is taken our charge to Congress where, if enacted into actual law, those laws can be put into place in 30, 60, 90 days.

PG: Just to put things into perspective, when there is an accident, that’s investigated by the NTSB. They are not a regulatory agency, but they do yeoman-like work trying to find out probable cause and then make what is often an urgent safety recommendation to that regulatory agency—the FAA. When we interviewed Deborah Hersman, the chairman of the NTSB, she told us there are currently 500 open, urgent safety recommendations before the FAA. They have acted on none of them.

Check out more with: Greg Feith, Former NTSB Investigator, Weighs In on Buffalo Crash

SM: The real tragedy is that if of these recommendations from the NTSB had been put into place, perhaps our accident may not have happened. Take, for example, the flight and duty schedule, which we know has to be addressed. They’ve been working o this for 20 years.

PG: Twenty years. It’s one thing to say we have a problem, that we don’t know what happened. But you study it, find out the solution, and know that you can implement the solution, and then you make the conscious decision not to implement the solution—in my book—that constitutes criminal negligence.

For more information about the efforts from the families of Continental Flight 3407, visit www.3407memorial.com.

From Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio.

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