A Pilot Shortage Made in Congress: Heavy-handed safety rule causing major problems for air travel.

Five years ago this month, two pilots aboard Colgan Air Flight 3407 made a series of fatal errors as they descended near Buffalo, N.Y. The plane spluttered in mid-air, tilting unnaturally, then made a terrible grinding sound as it fell near-vertical from the sky. It hit a house, exploding loudly; neighbors could see the flames from blocks away. All 49 people aboard the flight perished, as did one occupant of 6038 Long Street, which was totally destroyed.

Tragedies trigger calls for action. Unfortunately, such pleas are often more emotional than rational, resulting in bad policy. The legislation passed in response to the Colgan plane crash is a classic example.

In direct response to the Colgan crash, Congress passed the Airline Safety and FAA Extension Act of 2010, which mandated that the Federal Aviation Administration require pilots to complete 1,500 flight hours before they’re allowed to fly commercially, up from just 250 before the act. While this new rule does little to improve safety, it is exacerbating an already severe pilot shortage.

Boeing predicted recently that over the next 20 years, the global economy will demand 498,000 new commercial airline pilots. Already, many existing pilots are inching toward the mandatory retirement age, says Kent Lovelace, chair of aviation at the University of North Dakota. Even though Congress has changed the mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65, over the next decade around half of America’s 54,000 pilots will age out of the profession.

Meanwhile, too few pilots are available to replace the ones who are retiring. A historically low number of people are training to become pilots, and of those, only half are seeking a career with commercial airlines, Lovelace says. For many would-be pilots, the consideration is purely financial: While flight training costs between $60,000 and $70,000, entry-level pilot positions typically pay $25,000 a year or less. Furthermore, the financial turbulence that’s characterized the airline industry since September 11, 2001, has made the profession less attractive to aspiring aviators.

The existing workforce has been stretched even thinner by new anti-fatigue rules. Pilots were once required to have eight hours of time off between shifts, but now they must be given no less than ten hours. This particular anti-fatigue rule was empirically justifiable, and it may well improve safety, but it also results in airlines’ needing between 3 and 7 percent more pilots on the clock at any given time.

Together, these considerations have created a perfect storm for the airline industry, and, as major news sources have recently noted, the pilot shortage is beginning even faster than expected.

In that context, the new 1,500-flight-hour requirement is particularly harmful. Both pilots involved in the Colgan crash had far surpassed 1,500 hours of flight time, so it wouldn’t have prevented the accident. And the new requirement is all the worse because, as Lovelace says, it was “not based on science,” but was rather “a political decision. And it doesn’t matter whether you think it’s good or not. The only way it’s going to change is literally an act of Congress.”

As Congress considered the requirement, Senator Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) didn’t hesitate to trot out the surviving families of Colgan victims. “Every time there was a legislative blockage, we sent them to personally go talk to the senators involved, and every time, they broke through,” Schumer recently told a Gannett reporter.

But this tear-jerking approach to policymaking wholly ignores the facts. The Colgan crash, however horrific, was an extraordinary outlier.

Before the new flight-time rules for pilots kicked in, plane travel was already the safest it had been in the entire history of aviation. By the latest airline-industry count, there’s only one major accident for every 5 million flights on Western-built jets. Even in plane crashes, 95.7 percent of passengers survive, as CNN has reported. The New York Times has reported that “in the last five years, the death risk for passengers in the United States has been one in 45 million flights.”

Such bad policy has real consequences, which are already playing out. Last summer in my hometown of Cheyenne, Wyo., the tiny regional airport had to temporarily suspend 30 working pilots because they had not yet met the 1,500-hour requirement. And earlier this month, it announced it was suspending service to six airports because it couldn’t find enough pilots who met the FAA standards.

Those who once would have flown out of Cheyenne will now be forced to commute to Denver International Airport, about two hours’ drive away. Perhaps some of them will forgo air travel altogether and take a road trip. Keep in mind that between January and June 2013, 15,470 people died in motor-vehicle crashes in the United States; in 2012, only 475 people worldwide died in plane crashes (in comparison, the World Health Organization has reported that 1.24 million people across the world died in car crashes last year). Globally, fewer people die from air travel than die by using right-handed equipment when you’re a lefty, especially when it’s a power saw; by being crushed by televisions or furniture; or by getting a brain-eating parasite.

Though well-intentioned, the new rule does more harm than good, creating an additional and altogether unnecessary barrier to entry for much-needed pilots. Such are the perils of legislation by emotional reaction.

— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for National Review as a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow for the Franklin Center. She is also a senior fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum.

This new requirement is not the ‘hours,’ per se, it is certification.

You can get a commercial license with 200hrs but in order to earn an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) rating you need 1500hrs AND a level of proficiency that far exceeds your basic commercial ticket.

Therefore, the argument is to try and force the commuter airlines to seek and hire ATPs as opposed to commercial ticket holders.

Regarding military hours and such, for the Air Force you enter pilot training and it lasts about a year and you graduate with a little over 200hrs in the jet and a heck of a lot of simulator time. At the end of that year you are given wings and — if you wish — take an FAA written exam and receive your commercial, multi-engine land (limited center-line thrust), instrument airplane tickets.

After pining on your wings you have a ten year commitment. . .which has been around since I was in. I graduated pilot training back in 1981 and had a nine-year commitment. The commitment didn't hurt airlines as about half (sometimes more) USAF pilots would bail for the majors. Over 90% of the major's new hires were former military.

For the Air Force you must meet ‘gates,” meaning you have to have so many hours of flying and years on the line in order to receive flight pay. After pilot training you fly and fly and after many years you receive a staff job. Great. Not fun but necessary. Oddly, about the time the pilots are eligible to be assignment outside the cockpit, meeting their first ‘gate,” they also usually are at their 10-yr commitment and either go to the staff or get out. So if you go to the staff (non-flying) you will still receive flight pay as long as you met your gates. . .and there are reasons why.

If pilots stay in, they have to fly for so many years and log so many hours by so much time in. . .in order to receive flight pay while serving in a non-flying staff job. Yes, receiving flight pay while flying a desk sounds odd but there are sound reasons for it. First, aircraft today are very complicated and missions so demanding that if you are on a staff it would be unsafe, very unsafe to require some pilot to log, say, 10hrs a month to receive pay. That low of time and he can't remain safe or mission capable. Second, if you send a guy to the staff, something MOST pilots hate, and tell them you will take away their flight pay while they are riding a gray-steely chair in the basement of the Pentagon, they will leave the Air Force in even greater numbers and this means a huge cost in recruiting and training replacement pilots. Pay a little flight pay is far more cost effective than paying over a million bucks just to train a pilot trainee. . .not to mention the costs associated with flying for years to get really proficient and capable and Mission ready.

What is changing is the airline pay and benefits. As someone pointed out, the golden age of being an airline pilot is pretty much over when it comes to pay and such.

Basically, the “1500 hours” thing will not affect the military pilots that want to get out and fly commercially. They will have made that decision based upon factors beyond what the FAA demands/requires.

The 1500hr requirement will force commuter airlines to require their applicants to be ATP-rated, meaning having polished skill-sets beyond a basic commercial ticket. That will affect safety. While the 1500hrs thing isn't a measure of pilot proficiency or safety, in and of itself, but add an ATP to the 1500hrs and you do improve safety.

1500hrs and still having a basic commercial/instrument ticket is just flying and flying and never really achieving the highest proficiency and capability. In my mind, any pilot with 1500hrs SHOULD be looking to earn that ATP otherwise (again in my mind) he is lazy.

That is my view. Others may have a different opinion.

True. . .but that is not the whole story.

From my Post 23:

“The 1500hr requirement will force commuter airlines to require their applicants to be ATP-rated, meaning having polished skill-sets beyond a basic commercial ticket. That will affect safety. While the 1500hrs thing isn’t a measure of pilot proficiency or safety, in and of itself, but add an ATP to the 1500hrs and you do improve safety.

That is my view. Others may have a different opinion. “

What we are seeing mostly are primarily the civilian-trained (at huge personal cost) commercial pilots watching as they will be forced out in favor of those with an ATP (which is another HUGE cost. . .unless you are former military).

The real effect of this and the duty rules, is it will cause even more small cities to lose air service, as costs become even more marginal.

Cities that can’t support 300-400 seats a day on any given route are already endangered. Flying even the small 50-seaters has become cost-prohibitive. This just adds more to an already bad situation.

The 90’s “safety” rules already destroyed regional flying, and much of the American small aircraft Industry along with it. The result will be more small cities seeing the end of Commercial service.

And the logical extension of this is to require the fractional companies to comply, next.

IMHO, this has nothing to do with “safety”, and everything to do with creating the environment for Union organization, and the demand for higher wages to counter the loss of hours, just as in the Trucking Industry.

REMEMBER WHO WE ARE DEALING WITH HERE, FOLKS....

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