U.S. FAA May Consider Making Rules on Pilot Commuting (Update1)

June 10 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is examining whether to regulate airplane pilots’ commuting after a crash near Buffalo, New York, raised questions about the crew’s fatigue.

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, in testimony to a Senate aviation panel hearing today, said that pilots often live “hundreds of miles from the airlines’ bases of operations,” and the agency is considering whether their commutes are “an appropriate area for regulation.”

The investigation of a February crash of a Pinnacle Airlines Corp. plane near Buffalo that killed 50 people found that the co-pilot traveled all night on FedEx Corp. planes before taking a seat in the cockpit of the doomed flight.

National Transportation Safety Board members have raised concerns that low pay may force pilots to commute long distances, increasing the risk they arrive at work tired. While FAA rules have long held that that the responsibility to prevent fatigue lies with airlines and crews, the agency may re-examine its policy, Babbitt said.

“I’m worried that there are issues here of fatigue, training, commuting and perhaps salaries that perhaps played a role,” said Senator Byron Dorgan, the North Dakota Democrat who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety and Security.

FAA ‘Vulnerabilities’

Calvin Scovel, the Transportation Department’s inspector general, said there are “vulnerabilities” in FAA oversight of airlines, including inspections of planes and repair stations.

Scovel, who testified last year to Congress on lapses in FAA supervision of Southwest Airlines Co., said today that inspections shortcomings “were not limited to Southwest” and applied to other airlines. He also said the past six fatal commercial aviation accidents in the U.S. involved regional carriers.

The FAA said yesterday its investigators will focus on pilot training at regional airlines. That move too is a response to the inquiry into the Buffalo crash, which raised questions about the crew’s training and experience. The flight was operated by Pinnacle’s Colgan unit.

NTSB hearings last month also showed the pilots may have broken rules against unnecessary cockpit chatter.

“This is a stunning set of failures,” Dorgan said of the Colgan pilots’ compensation, fatigue, cockpit conversation and “inappropriate response” to the plane’s automated systems. “Is it just something that is Byzantine and unusual to that cockpit? Or is a harbinger of something that is much broader?”

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at agreilingkea@bloomberg.net