Meat Grinder Series: Desperate pilots flying passenger planes

No-no-no, this is not about 9-11 and terrorists flying planes into buildings. The story is about the crash of Continental Flight 3407 which was operated by Colgan Air near Buffalo, New York.

During the National Transportation Safety Board’s inquiry into the accident it became known that:

- pilot of the plane, Marvin D. Renslow, 47, did not have sufficient training to fly the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 and lied about his flight record when he was hired
- his co-pilot, Rebecca Lynn Shaw , 24, did not have sufficient training either, especially, about flying the plane in icy conditions
- both Renslow and Shaw had long commute from their places of residences - Orlando, Florida and Seattle, Washington – to Newark, New Jersey. They were hitching rides on other planes, and, once “at work”, they had little breaks between flights, could not afford a hotel room, and were sleep-deprived.
- both pilot and co-pilot were grossly underpaid by the company. Renslow made $55K last year, Shaw about $16K. In fact they made so little money, that they had to have second jobs. Renslaw worked at a local supermarket. Shaw worked as a waitress, and had to live with her husband at her parents’ home

Of course, the company blames pilot and co-pilot for the crash, for not reporting fatigue, for not being sufficiently trained, and so on.

However, it is obvious, that this is not the complete picture. What is obvious here, is that Continental and Colgan Air created a system to squeeze as much profit as possible from their operations. They fired experienced pilots, who had to be paid significantly more than $55K, and, lowered their hiring standards and training budget. Considering shortage of jobs and opportunities in this country, there was no shortage of willing, but inexperienced and unqualified, individuals to apply for these jobs.

This problem exists throughout the United States and in many remaining industries. For example, for years IT workers are replaced by unqualified cheap foreign labor. Many argued that lowering the quality of software that is increasingly used to operate every aspect our lives will result in losses of sensitive information, breaches in security, even terrorist attacks. All these argument were falling on deaf ears. None of this happened – yet.

Well, we only know about Continental Flight 3407 because it crashed and killed 50 people

More about the crash here, here, and here.