Cargo carriers pose conundrum for air safety bill
Catching a flight out of Buffalo soon?
If so, your odds of getting an experienced pilot would be much higher if you were a package rather than a person.
Quote from the article:
Source: Cargo carriers pose conundrum for air safety bill
If so, your odds of getting an experienced pilot would be much higher if you were a package rather than a person.
Quote from the article:
While regional passenger airlines can hire pilots with as little as 250 hours of flying experience, FedEx has required 1,500 hours of flight time for its pilots for as long as Frederick W. Smith, its chairman, can remember. UPS, meanwhile, rarely hires a pilot with fewer than 5,000 hours of experience, a company spokesman said. Both of those shipping giants say they strongly support an aviation bill that toughens pilot hiring standards at passenger airlines. But a Capitol Hill battle between those rivals on a labor issue now threatens to sink that entire bill — along with the safety provisions that the Families of Continental Flight 3407 fought to include. In the midst of it all, the families are trying to stay clear of the fight between FedEx and UPS while noting the irony that the parcel companies have the pilot hiring standards they have been pushing at regional airlines. “We don’t have a horse in that race,” Scott Maurer, one of the most active members of the families group, said of the labor battle between FedEx and UPS. “These two companies want to make sure their air crews and the packages they deliver arrive safe and sound,” said Maurer, who lost his daughter Lorin in the plane crash in Clarence in February 2009. “That’s why they hire experienced pilots. The same standards should should apply at regional airlines.” FedEx requires an Air Transport Pilot (ATP) license and its 1,500 minimum flight hours, for its pilots. The House version of the aviation bill includes that standard, which the families also are advocating. “When you get in one of these transport category airplanes and you don’t have that criteria, it’s not a certainty that you’re going to have the requisite experience to operate it safely or reliably all the time,” said Smith, a retired Marine who founded Federal Express in the early 1970s. |
Source: Cargo carriers pose conundrum for air safety bill
