Analysis: RAA Seemingly Late on NTSB Concerns

The Regional Airline Association and FAA seemed blissfully unaware of the year-long drumbeat by National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chair Robert Sumwalt about regional aviation safety. When asked to respond to Sumwalt’s concerns, RAA Chair Bryan Bedford, who is also CEO of Republic Holdings...

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The Regional Airline Association and FAA seemed blissfully unaware of the year-long drumbeat by National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chair Robert Sumwalt about regional aviation safety. When asked to respond to Sumwalt’s concerns, RAA Chair Bryan Bedford, who is also CEO of Republic Holdings, Inc., fell back on an answer more appropriate to the general assignment press, spouting assurances about a single level of safety and regional and network carriers follow the same rules.
For its part, FAA's Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety could only say that the agency is concerned about pilots experience and training. However, he related that concern to the transition from general aviation turboprops to very light jets. However, he noted that the requirements for an ATP rating is still 1,500 hours. "We are concerned about low experience and what we can do to address that."
Bedford called the board a “politically motivated organization,” in an attempt to marginalize an issue that has caused massive disruptions in passenger confidence in the past. “If you go back into early 1994-1995 single level of safety initiatives, we needed one level of safety to ensure traveling public understood that commuter airlines did not mean less safety,” he said. “We’ve spent a lot of money to lift ourselves up on the regulatory compliance and flight training sides. Having said that, we have also embraced programs like ASAP and FOQA and we are employing the same tools in flight simulation and internal monitoring and compliance as the network carriers. It is interesting to me that the same pundits who want to bash the regional airlines, won’t pat us on the back having come through the recent inspections with flying colors.”
Of course, he is right. But the fact is, with the exception of ASAP and FOQA, much of that had largely been accomplished by the industry itself before the 1994 safety crisis precipitated by four Part 121 accidents. At that time, US Airways experienced two accidents, one of which finally convinced regulators there was a defect in the 737 rudder and the other convinced the FAA to change approach and landing procedures at Charlotte. But it was not the network carriers that were targeted by media and self-serving pilots and aviation insurance advocates. It was the regionals, resulting in calls for a single level of safety that cost the industry millions of dollars. Never mind that the two regional airlines accidents – American Eagle ATR 72 and Jetstream 31 – were already being operated at a single-level-of-safety standards since American had mandated Part 121 standards for its regional operations.
It is curious that regional execs have not taken Sumwalt’s regional safety attacks more seriously. Perhaps they have become complacent not having had a major safety crisis in more than a decade. Perhaps it is because the Regional Airline Association has no one on staff who personally underwent that crisis. Perhaps it is because the Comair accident Lexington, Ky. two years ago did not lead to a safety crisis in the industry as previous regional accidents have. That fact, alone, is certainly a measure of how far we have come in the last decade and represents a sea change in regional airline perception, especially with the media. It is also significant that recent safety scandals, such as the Southwest/American FAA oversight issues regionals remained largely unscathed except those associated with American. Related Story
RAA President Roger Cohen said it was only recently, at least a year after Sumwalt began speaking out on the subject, that he and Scott Foose spent time with Sumwalt and his staff and noted that during last year’s convention the perception of another board member was completely changed. “To say the least, when we were done, there was a new dialogue,” he said. “Sumwalt had some strong views as did his staff. It was the first time he had heard another side of the story. The Board today is very clear on regional airline safety. But it is also clear that we need to stand up and be more pro-active and speak on this issue which will be doing.”
Cohen also noted that one of the major aims of this year’s convention was to bring airline safety directors and vice presidents of operations together with regulators to come up with best practices. “These meeting are compelling shows how much our members care about what they are doing,” he said.
Bedford finally indicated that these are necessary debates, “and our safety track record speaks volumes” adding "RAA needs to be more proactive in making the public understand what the true facts are.”
But it is not just the regulators and safety experts, RAA must address. It is the media as well and several top publications such as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have covered Sumwalt’s concerns about pilot experience and training in addition to the industry’s problems with runway safety.
Even so, congressional and media focus on the FAA oversight scandal worries regional executives, not that they fear another major crackdown on the regional industry, but for its threat to such successful data-gathering and trend-management initiatives as ASAP, FOQA and voluntary disclosures. “This has been a fantastic change from FAA’s old mandate when FAA and industry had an adversarial relationship,” said Bedford. “They found that coming at us with a big stick was not the best way to improve aviation safety and that the us-vs-them mentality was a huge mistake. We will become a lot more vocal in terms of our belief in how valuable these programs are in improving the safety of the system domestically. We can’t allow these distractions to derail 10 to 15 years of the significant progress we have made. I hope all members will take this battle cry and support this process of making the airline industry safer through a collaborative process and not an adversarial one.”