The FAA, In an effort to enhance airline safety following last year’s Colgan Air accident in Buffalo, NY, has announced an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) which will be published next week in the Federal Register and will have a 60-day comment period. The FAA is soliciting recommendations to improve pilot qualification and training requirements. Specific areas that the FAA is seeking input on are:
· Should all pilots who transport passengers be required to hold an Air Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate with the appropriate aircraft category, class and type ratings, which would raise the required flight hours for these pilots to 1,500 hours?
· Should the FAA permit academic credit in lieu of required flight hours or experience?
· Should the FAA establish a new commercial pilot certificate endorsement that would address concerns about the operational experience of newly hired commercial pilots, require additional flight hours and possibly credit academic training?
· Would an air carrier-specific authorization on an existing pilot certificate improve safety?
SAFE will definitely be a part of this process and is soliciting input from it’s membership as it prepares it’s official response. I would encourage all of you to take part both in submitting your own recommendations to the FAA, as well as sharing any thoughts or comments with the SAFE committee as it prepares the official SAFE NPRM response.
Please send Doug Stewart your input (SAFE@dsflight.com) so that we can be sure to prepare a response that truly reflects the entire membership’s thoughts on this matter that will truly affect all of us.
