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Tuesday, Oct 14, 2008
Regional airlines, small jets -- why is the airline industry in such a hurry to downsize?
Feb 25, 2005 | At least one of you caught the flub in last week's column in which I claimed the 2003 crash of a US Airways Express turboprop stands as our only fatal accident since autumn 2001. The tragedy I neglected to mention -- inexcusably, since I'd written of it only the week before -- was that of Corporate Airlines flight 5966 near Kirksville, Mo., this past October.
Both crashes involved 19-passenger turboprops -- a Beechcraft 1900 in the case of the former, a Jetstream 32 in the latter -- performing code-share operations on behalf of major carrier affiliates. The US Airways Express craft was crewed by Air Midwest, regional subsidiary of the Mesa Air Group, also a subcontractor to America West and United. Corporate flew under the banner of American Connection, a partner of American Airlines.
Stay with me now. American Connection is not to be confused with American Eagle, the better known and wholly owned stepchild of AMR Corp., responsible for the brunt of American Airlines' feeder flying. Corporate's tie to American is essentially one of name only, and it shares the ad hoc Connection moniker with the similarly aligned Trans States Airlines. The two were paired up to take on low-volume markets from American's newly conquered ex-TWA hub in St. Louis.
None of this is pointed out, I should add, to suggest that the increasingly convoluted relationships between large and small airlines are a detriment to safety. At the same time, they're confusing and obfuscating, intentionally or otherwise, which will always be a bad thing more than a good one. Lawsuits filed after Kirksville propose that victims were led to believe the Jetstream, including the salary and training of its pilots, was under the complete auspices of American Airlines. Which was not the case.
Even fully administered franchises like American's Eagle are run independently, with separate seniority lists, bargaining agreements, training departments and management structures. (Pilots and flight attendants at these entities do not, with the occasional exception, enjoy automatic progression from regional to major.)
Does that, on its own, leave American culpable if the crew is found at fault? Not likely, but either way it would probably behoove ticket sellers to be more open and upfront about exactly whose airplane their customers will be taking a seat on. It's always there in the fine print, but people are apt not to notice or otherwise to misunderstand.
Corporate Airlines, should you have trouble Googling, now calls itself RegionsAir. For some that brings back memories of the Everglades crash in 1996, and the AirTran-nèe-ValuJet transition that followed. RegionsAir says it commenced the name-change process well before Kirksville.
Meanwhile, and I'll just throw this out there since it's already making the media rounds, much as it offends my rule of remaining mum before the official judgments are in: The Kirksville crew had been on duty for almost 15 hours and was preparing for its sixth landing of the day. That's a potential red flag that may or may not mean anything. Go easy on the conjecture, and remember a few points stressed in this space before:
Myth 1: Small planes are inherently more dangerous than larger ones.
Truth: The metric between size and safety is a tough one to shake, and it's wrong. Groan about the noise, vibration or elbow room if you want, and it's true that smaller planes are better -- which is to say worse -- at transmitting the ripples and lurches of flight from airframe to flesh, but there's almost nothing about size, strictly speaking, that correlates one way or the other to the chances of crashing.
Myth 2: Small planes are quaint and ill-equipped.
Truth: A modern turboprop can wear a price tag of $15 million; a spiffy new regional jet (RJ) more than twice that amount. And if you haven't noticed, that money isn't going into galleys and sleeper seats. It's going toward the same high-tech avionics and cockpit advances you'll find in many a widebody Boeing.
Myth 3: Pilots of these planes are young and inexperienced.
Truth: Some are, some aren't, and experience here is a relative thing. Often enough it's industry economics -- hiring trends and rates of attrition -- that determine aggregate experience levels. In any case, all crews are trained to the same high standards, and logbook totals aren't always a good indicator of skills. In the meantime, many pilots on furlough status from the struggling mainliners have found themselves biting the bullet at this or that Connection, Eagle, Airlink or Express. (Complex and sophisticated as their machines tend to be, the average RJ pilot's salary starts at around $20,000 per year and sometimes less.)
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