|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||
FAA Fines Colgan
Air, Pilots/Fight Attendants Not Getting Minimum Amount Of Rest By Shane Nolan |
||||
March 5, 2012 - The FAA alleges that between June 14,
2008 and Feb. 23, 2009, Colgan scheduled flight duty
time for two captains, two first officers and six flight
attendants on a seventh day after they had been on duty
for the previous six consecutive days.
The FAA regulations required the airline to relieve each
crewmember from duty for at least 24 consecutive hours
during any seven consecutive calendar days. One of the
captains operated four flights without adequate rest.
Each of the other flight crew members operated one
flight without meeting this rest requirement.
The FAA also alleges that Colgan failed to give three
flight attendants a required scheduled rest period of at
least eight consecutive hours after scheduling them on
flights after their previous duty period. Two of the
incidents took place on June 15, 2008 and the third took
place on Sept. 16, 2008.
Finally, the FAA alleges that Colgan scheduled a first
officer for flight time on Nov. 7, 2008 when the pilot's
total flight time in commercial flying exceeded eight
hours between required rest periods. |
||||
This civil
penalty involves alleged violations predating the FAA's new
pilot flight, duty and rest rules that were announced in
December 2011. The new regulations will go into effect in
December 2013. Colgan Air has 30 days from the receipt of the
civil penalty letter to respond. You may remember Colgan Air when it made a name for itself when Colgan Air Flight 3407, marketed as Continental Connection under a codeshare agreement with Continental Airlines, a regional airline flight from Newark, New Jersey to Buffalo, New York crashed. The plane crashed into a house in Clarence Center, New York on February 12, 2009, at 10:17 p.m. The crash killed 50 people, including the two pilots, two flight attendants, 45 passengers (including an off-duty pilot), and a person in the house into which the plane crashed. It was the first fatal accident of a commercial airliner in the United States since the August 2006 crash of Comair Flight 191. The NTSB ruled one of the factors that lead to the crash were the pilots did not have adequate rest before the flight.
Colgan
Air, Inc. is a regional airline subsidiary of Pinnacle Airlines
Corp. The headquarters of Colgan Air are located in Memphis,
Tennessee. Colgan Air's major hubs are Boston's Logan
International Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport,
Newark Liberty International Airport, and Houston's George Bush
Intercontinental Airport. It has been operating as US Airways
Express since 1999 and now serves almost 50 cities in the
Northeast and Texas as a feeder for US Airways Express and
United Express. Pinnacle Airlines Corp. plans to phase out the
Colgan Air name. |