Attention All Passengers (18 page)

Yet another issue is child safety restraints. They are sometimes incompatible on commercial aircraft, and this is a particularly acute problem on regional planes. This was demonstrated in December 2010 when the mother of a one-year-old was booted off a United flight in Aspen operated by SkyWest when her safety seat didn't fit.

Of course, many regional planes don't have galleys. So when you consider that the average business-class and first-class passengers on mainline jets are offered unlimited drinks, hot meals, sleeper seats, and an array of onboard entertainment choices, it's mystifying to consider that passengers pay more for “premium class” on regional jets, where the price can run five times as much. “I don't think you can justify the cost domestically,” says Counter, asserting that nearly everyone flying in first class on a regional is not paying for it. He explains that most are upgrading for free using frequent flyer mileage, or connecting to or from long-haul flights.

Yet even redeeming frequent flyer miles is impacted when passengers fly on regional aircraft. When airlines cut service on a given route, they often downgrade from larger to smaller aircraft, but regional jets often don't offer first class, and the front of the plane is a much less comfortable experience. And in a very ironic twist, low-cost carriers such as JetBlue and Virgin America that fly larger jets suddenly look much better than the majors, when those majors are outsourcing flying to regional jets. It's a competitive advantage, as evidenced by JetBlue boasting front and center on its website of spacious economy-class legroom.
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But cabin and seat size issues can transcend comfort. For many passengers, especially the elderly, oversized, or handicapped, regional aircraft simply aren't suitable. This has been borne out through the years when the DOT has fined regional carriers for not adhering to the Air Carrier Access Act of 1986, which “requires airlines to provide assistance to passengers with disabilities in boarding and deplaning aircraft, including the use of wheelchairs, ramps, mechanical lifts, or service personnel where needed.” Little wonder that Atlantic Southeast Airlines was assessed a $200,000 civil penalty by the DOT in July 2011 for a number of violations. Considering the lack of jet bridges and the cramped confines on many regional flights, it's surprising there aren't more disability complaints filed with the DOT.

Congestion Issues: Smaller Planes Clog the Skies

To gain some perspective on just how pervasive regional partnerships have become, it helps to examine a major airline's total operation. For example, US Airways operates 3,310 daily flights, but only 1,291 of those departures are “mainline” while a whopping 2,019 are regionals. Also, the carrier has 338 aircraft in its fleet, but its nine regional partners fly another 303 planes. And for sheer size and scope, American Eagle (which calls itself “the largest regional airline system in the world”) is larger than many mainline airlines, operating more than 1,700 daily flights to more than 150 cities throughout the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico.

What some would call unnecessary congestion is a source of pride for the Regional Airline Association; Cohen notes that at the beginning of each day, in the hours between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m., there are thirty-five northbound nonstop flights between the three Washington, D.C.–area airports and four New York City–area airports—and all but five are operated by regionals.

For many airline executives, regionals are the new reality, and such outsourcing will only increase. Cohen explains: “From my first day in the industry, I was always told we were to throw more asses into seats. Don't you think the mainlines would do that if they thought they could?” When I asked how the nation can absorb all this airborne congestion, his answer was quick: “Fix the air traffic control system.”

The answer to that, of course, is the fabled NextGen air traffic control system, the technological upgrade the DOT is seeking for the nation's outmoded current network. But a key sticking point in NextGen's implementation has been, Who will pay to equip the aircraft—the airlines or the FAA? And if the airlines are going to be responsible for making expensive high-tech investments in satellite technology, the deep-pocketed mainlines seem better able to ante up than the smaller regional companies. Yet Cohen predicts that in general regionals will be equipped just like their big brother partners, and he says that they will make these investments on their own.

The promise of saturated flight frequencies—not just a 2 p.m. departure, but a 1 p.m. and a 3 p.m. as well—clearly has left most mainline airlines quite overextended. The airlines are selling what customers want, not what they can deliver. And there may be more method than madness to such strategies; some industry experts believe the real motivation behind the major airlines' madness is to hog space at congested airports and prevent rival carriers from operating competing flights.
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That's why consumers are given only half the bargain: yes, there are more flights, but they are coupled with more delays (not to mention higher ticket prices). Fewer frequencies but improved on-time records would be a better choice.

All this congestion generated by sending more and more small airplanes into the air could not come at a worse time in the history of American commercial aviation. Busy airports such as LaGuardia and JFK in New York City, National in Washington, and O'Hare in Chicago are operating above capacity on a daily basis, and entire sections of the country are affected when delays start stacking up at the major hubs.

What's worse, smaller regional airplanes do more than just occupy space that could be allocated to larger jets; in fact, they slow down the entire system even more. Regulations require that different sized aircraft in the air traffic flow be afforded additional “miles in trail” separation for takeoffs, cruising, and landings, thereby generating even more delays. The in-trail requirement for back-to-back large and small aircraft is about six miles, nearly double what is needed for two large aircraft. Not to mention that the current system is a regression, since in the 1980s many airlines utilized airports that allowed for smaller turboprop aircraft to operate on shorter parallel runways, thus freeing up space both on the ground and in the air, a practice that has become much less common.

The only good news is that regional jets have gotten larger in recent years. According to the RAA, when deregulation was launched in 1978, the average seating capacity on a regional aircraft was 16 passengers and the average flight distance was 129 miles. By 2011 that number had risen to 56, and the flight length had more than tripled to 457 miles.

Furthermore, by 2030 the average regional aircraft is expected to hold 65 seats, meaning the old days of noisy turboprops are passing, and the mainline airlines will continue outsourcing more of their short-haul flying than ever. The FAA's twenty-year forecast for 2011 predicts an average annual growth rate of 4.1 percent for regional airlines every year through 2031, and that's in the most mature of all markets, the United States. So in actuality this “growth” is not growth at all; it's just a transfer of wealth from real airlines to their silent surrogate partners. For many passengers, there will be no choice.

Regional Airplanes Accelerate Climate Change

More airplanes in the sky mean more carbon emissions in the sky. And that is the problem. I happen to be very familiar with this phenomenon because I used to release dozens of aircraft in the busy Northeast corridor when I was an operations control duty manager for the Pan Am Shuttle. One of the primary functions of airline dispatching is to ensure that every flight operates as economically as possible by burning as little fuel as possible. So while that was always a financial consideration, I'm neither proud nor ashamed to state that in the early 1990s none of us ever considered aircraft fuel burn in the context of the environment, only in the context of cost savings. It literally was not on our radar.

Juan Alonso, the aeronautical environmental expert at Stanford University who served beside me on the FAAC, maintains that so much additional regional flying made sense back when fuel was cheap enough. Now it's not only harmful to the planet but too expensive as well. He suggests high-speed rail should be the dominant mode for trips up to five hundred miles.

But there is a problem particular to regional fleets: empirical evidence that smaller aircraft are less efficient and spend more time on climb.
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Many of us may view such issues in terms of automobiles: that is, small cars are better than large cars because they burn less fuel. But when it comes to mass transportation, the environmental sweet spot is often contained within the largest vehicles, even if they are aircraft with four jet engines. It's all about moving the most people the most efficiently. Experts say the current practice of operating three to six regional aircraft on routes that could be serviced by just one large aircraft is a formula that is killing us softly.

At my meeting with Secretary LaHood, I asked about all those planes crowding the skies. He responded, “People are making those choices every day here in the Northeast Corridor. That's why the trains are full, that's why Amtrak is making money, that's why ridership on Amtrak is way up. But there will always be people who will want to ride a plane because they just will and they believe they will get there quicker. The point is, we can do both. But in the end I think people will always decide on air travel.”

With Regional Airlines, Safety Questions Abound

For many passengers, this may all boil down to—So what's in a name, anyway? Whether it's Delta or Chautauqua, who cares what company is listed on the FAA's operating certificate so long as we arrive on time? Fair enough. But what if you don't arrive at all, as was the case with five codeshared regional flights in recent years? Because we've learned there's a world of difference in how Continental Airlines operates and how Colgan Air operates.

During the 1990s there was a string of fatal regional airline accidents, at a time when “commuter carriers” were governed by Part 135, a separate section of the Federal Aviation Regulations. A report from the U.S. General Accounting Office in 1992 noted the increasing accident rate—twenty-two in 1991 alone—and cited “inadequate inspections” by the FAA. Pressure from Congress, labor unions, and passenger advocates helped convince the DOT that all commercial aircraft with more than ten seats operating scheduled passenger service should adhere to Part 121, and the change was made in 1995. As an FAA-licensed dispatcher and former flight operations manager, I remember the relief I felt at that time, knowing that until then regional airlines were not even required to hire dispatchers, a federal mandate since 1938 for larger carriers.

So theoretically, for the last seventeen years there has been one safety standard for both mainline and regional airlines in the United States. But many experts maintain that in the real world regional airlines de facto adhere to lesser standards for pilot qualifications, crew training, and operational and maintenance requirements. The Buffalo crash made this painfully clear. The fact is that some of these partners are the weak links for the mainlines, in the most literal sense of that term.

The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, the union that represents FAA inspectors, has been vocal about regional airline safety for years. When I pointed out the multiple fatal accidents involving U.S. regional carriers over the past decade, PASS president Tom Brantley said, “The FAA attitude is those don't count.” He said that real differences still exist: For one thing, DOT safety statistics are kept separately, so a true big picture of U.S. airline safety is not presented. What's more, training for regional carriers allows pilots to continue operating after failing a specific function during simulator training, while mainline pilots must master such tasks before returning to the line. And as the Colgan accident made clear, crew rest and commuting issues seem more prevalent among regional airlines.

As for security, what many passengers don't realize is that some regional carriers have been given waivers from cockpit door barriers—there not only is no reinforcement on the cockpit door, there simply isn't a cockpit door
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on certain smaller airplanes. This was made painfully obvious in 2006 when a passenger made his way onto the flight deck as a Beech 1900-D operated by Gulfstream International Airlines—which codeshares on behalf of Continental—was taxiing on an active runway.

There are inherent safety risks in flying regional carriers. One is the route maps of the regionals, because they often fly into smaller airports not serviced by legacy carriers, and this can mean fewer or less advanced aeronautical navigational aids. It can also mean second-tier crash and rescue protection. What's more, the physics of smaller aircraft make survival statistically less likely in a regional airplane than in a larger aircraft.
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Time and again, discussions about regional safety return to Flight 3407 in Buffalo. As MIT's Swelbar notes, “Colgan taught us that not all regionals are created equal.” He and others cite SkyWest, Pinnacle, and Republic as the strongest regional carriers, but experts claim that Colgan and Mesa are not comparable companies.

That's why Bill Voss of the Flight Safety Foundation asserts that ISO certification bestowed by the International Organization for Standardization—a Geneva-based organization that represents 159 countries around the world—is a tougher standard than the FAA's. He says, “It's that mix-up that compliance correlates to safety—and it doesn't. You have A students and A+ students if you grade them under ISO standards. There are several U.S. regionals that would not meet the ISO standards. If I were head of the Regional Airline Association, I'd have a smaller club with the cream of the crop.” One former major airline executive agrees with this sentiment, and told me his company would not work with Mesa.