Flight 3407 families helped by 'Miracle' co-pilot
WASHINGTON — Members of the group Families of Continental Flight 3407 returned to Capitol Hill on Thursday to lobby for airline safety legislation — and this time, they had a hero at their side.
Jeffrey B. Skiles, co-pilot of the disabled US Airways jet that landed successfully in the Hudson River in January, joined the Flight 3407 family members as they made their case in one Senate office after another.
Although they encountered one disappointment — a growing sense among senators and their staffs that aviation safety legislation may get pushed into next year — they said lawmakers seemed receptive to their goal of increasing the minimum number of flight hours for new pilots from 250 to 1,500.
The families said they asked Skiles to join them, thinking that it would add a revered voice to their argument.
"It was really their idea," Skiles said of the joint lobbying effort. "They wanted to bring professional pilots along, and we wanted to help because we are very much in support of their position."
Skiles serves as vice president of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations, and the trade group's president, Paul Onorato, joined the lobbying mission, as well.
Skiles acknowledged that the near-tragedy of Flight 1549 — and the crew's reaction in saving the plane and the 155 people aboard in what was called "Miracle on the Hudson" — gave him and the pilot, Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, a platform for speaking out on aviation safety.
"Sully and I have become representatives of our entire profession, and we take that very seriously," Skiles said.
As for the families of the victims of Flight 3407 — which crashed into a Clarence Center home Feb. 12, claiming 50 lives — they said that it was important to have someone of Skiles' stature fighting on their side.
"After all, who do the American people want in the cockpit when they get on a plane?" asked Scott Maurer, who lost his daughter, Lorin, in the crash. "They want Jeff, and they want Sully."
Sullenberger and Skiles present a sharp contrast with Flight 3407 pilot Marvin D. Renslow and co-pilot Rebecca L. Shaw.
Both longtime pilots with thousands of hours of experience, Sullenberger and Skiles performed impeccably after their plane hit a flock of birds and lost power in both engines in the skies above New York City.
Fearing that there was no way to make it to any nearby airport, Sullenberger and Skiles made an emergency landing in the Hudson. National Transportation Safety Board member Kathryn O'Leary Higgins called it the most successful such landing ever.
"These people knew what they were supposed to do, and they did it," Higgins told reporters afterward. "... As a result, nobody lost their life."
In contrast, Renslow and Shaw allowed Flight 3407 to slow to a dangerously low speed, and then Renslow reacted in the exact opposite way that he should have once a stall warning sounded, meaning he couldn't regain control of the plane.
The Clarence Center crash spurred a cry for greater pilot training and other safety measures at regional airlines such as Colgan Air, which operated Flight 3407 on behalf of Continental.
Skiles said such measures, which supporters hope to include in pending legislation reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration, are essential — as the Clarence Center crash proved.
"That was just a horrible accident, an accident that didn't have to happen," Skiles said of the Clarence Center crash. "Those people did not have to die." And while the crew appears to be at fault for the crash, Skiles said the blame is more widespread than that. After all, he said, the crew had not been fully trained in stall recovery.
"The system put them in a position to fail," Skiles said.
The Flight 3407 families have made a strong effort to make that point before Congress, and until recently they appeared to have momentum to get the FAA bill passed, with significant safety reforms included, this year.
But the lingering congressional health care debate along with objections from flight schools that oppose boosting the minimum number of flight hours for pilots have slowed their effort.
Meanwhile, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board, Deborah A.P. Hersman, said during a Senate hearing Thursday that the final report on the Clarence Center crash would be released by February.
"I would hope that would light a fire" among lawmakers to finish the air safety legislation before then, Skiles said. "They wouldn't want to look like they haven't done anything."
Lawmaking, though, is a slow and laborious process, and the Flight 3407 families have inserted themselves into it to press for those stronger flight-hour requirements for pilots.
They said they were encouraged by what happened at the meetings Thursday.
Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Aviation Subcommittee, said he has not yet decided on a solution for the issue of pilot hours. But the families said he seemed very sympathetic to their argument that there's no substitute for pilot experience.
Meanwhile, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, appeared supportive, they said.
The good reception was probably due in part to Skiles' presence, they said.
Onorato and Skiles "were able to cite example after example after example" of why pilots need plenty of experience before being entrusted with commercial flights with passengers aboard, said Karen Eckert, whose sister Beverly Eckert, a 9/11 activist, died in the Clarence Center crash.
Skiles acknowledged that even some experienced pilots — such as the Northwest Airlines crew that overflew the Minneapolis airport by 150 miles last week while they were using laptops — make horrible mistakes.
But he said he has seen enough to know that, in general, the more that pilots fly, the better they will be.
And that, Skiles said, is important for one big reason: "For a pilot, the best safety device is the guy or gal next to you in the cockpit."
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