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Crash victims want Senate to confirm Obama FAA nominee
A Senate committee should vote to confirm interim Federal Aviation Administration chief Michael Huerta this week, a group formed to lobby for the families of victims of a 2009 plane crash near Buffalo, N.Y., said Tuesday.
The Families of Continental Flight 3407 said the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee should vote to approve President Obama's nomination of Huerta to a full five-year term atop the FAA. The committee is scheduled to resume consideration of Huerta in an executive session on Tuesday after a previous hearing was interrupting by voting in the full Senate.
The families of Flight 3407 said Huerta would help their quest to have rules for airline pilots to apply to regional carriers like Colgan Air, which was operating the doomed Buffalo flight for Continental in 2009.
"Since Mr. Huerta took over as acting Administrator, he has made a sincere effort to get to know our group and to understand our passion for achieving a true 'One Level of Safety' when comparing our nation's regional airlines with their parent carriers," East Aurora, N.Y., resident Susan Bourque, whose sister Beverly Eckert died in the crash, said in a statement released by the group.
Huerta has been serving out the remainder of former FAA Administrator Randy Babbit's term since Babitt resigned in December 2011. Babbitt resigned after being charged with drunk driving, but the charges against him were later dropped.
The Continental Connection flight crashed as it approached the airport in Buffalo in February 2009. Critics have cited pilot fatigue as one of the possible causes of the accident, but the National Transportation Safety Board attributed the crash to pilot errors in 2010.
Nearly three years after the 3407 crash, the FAA unveiled new rules for pilots in late 2011.
Under the new rules, pilots would be required to get at least 10 hours of off-duty time between flight schedules, which transportation officials said would give them at least the opportunity to get eight hours of sleep before they get to the cockpit.
Pilots would also be limited to no more than nine hours of "flight time," which is considered by the FAA to be any time an airplane is moving on its own power, even if it is on the ground at airport. Pilots would also be limited to 28 working days in a month.
Huerta's nomination is one of nine items scheduled to be considered by the Senate Commerce Committee on Tuesday. Also scheduled to be considered is a bill to block the European Union from imposing its emission trading requirements on U.S. airlines (S. 1956).
The bill, which has been dubbed the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme Prohibition Act, has already been approved by the House.
