Aviation panel tries to undercut key safety change

WASHINGTON — The aviation industry is trying to water down a key safety change recently passed by Congress in response to a regional airline crash last year that killed 50 people.

A Federal Aviation Administration advisory panel dominated by airlines, companies that employ pilots to fly corporate planes and university flight schools wants to reduce by two-thirds a requirement that airline co-pilots have a minimum of 1,500 hours of flying experience — the same experience threshold that captains must meet.

The key issue is money, according to officials familiar with the panel's deliberations. Airlines worry that if the FAA raises the threshold for co-pilots — also called first officers — from the current minimum of 250 hours, airlines will be forced to raise pilot salaries and benefits in order to attract more experienced fliers, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Most airline pilots have far more experience than 1,500 hours. But industry analysts have forecast a pilot shortage if the economy starts to expand, which could create a premium for experience. The salaries of corporate and other private pilots are affected by airline salaries.

University flight schools are similarly concerned that if beginner pilots have to accrue 1,500 hours of flight experience before they can be hired by an airline, they'll skip expensive university training in favor of amassing flight time through per-hour instruction.

Using a provision in the new law that allows the FAA to give prospective pilots some credit for flight-school training, the panel proposed allowing airlines to hire university-trained first officers with as few as 500 hours, according to a copy of the panel's recommendations.

The roles of airline captains and first officers have changed over the years. Today, both pilots are expected to be able to fly a plane equally well and to share duties.

The FAA formed the committee this summer just before Congress passed a far-reaching aviation-safety bill, including the boost in required flight hours. The law was prompted by a regional airline crash near Buffalo, N.Y., in 2009 that killed 50 people. The flight's 24-year-old first officer earned about $16,000 in the year before the accident. She lived at home with her parents near Seattle but flew across the country in order to reach the airline's base in Newark, N.J., in time for the flight.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigation concluded that the first officer and the flight's captain were probably suffering fatigue at the time of the accident. Neither had slept in a bed the night before — the first officer napped in a cockpit jump seat, the captain in a crew lounge. Pilots, particularly at regional airlines, often can't afford to live in the communities where they're based.