Kirksville plane crash sheds light on pilot fatigue issue

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The crash of a commuter plane in northeast Missouri last week, killing 13 of the 15 people on board, has focused new attention on the length of time pilots are allowed to work on a given day.

The Corporate Airlines plane crashed Oct. 19 on a flight from St. Louis to the northeast Missouri community of Kirksville. It was the sixth flight of the day for pilots Kim Sasse, 48, of Ramsey, N.J., and Jonathan Palmer, 29, of Cincinnati, who died with 11 of their 13 passengers. The two pilots had been on duty for 14 hours and 41 minutes, which is within Federal Aviation Administration guidlines, when Flight 5966 crashed on aproach to the Kirksville airport.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation, and there has been no indication pilot fatigue played a role. But Corporate Airlines pilots have been talking for months about joining a union, partly because of concern over long hours, a Teamsters official said.

"That is one of the issues," said Don Treichler, airline division manager for the Teamsters. "It has to do with the amount of rest they get, the hours they work, the repetitiveness of the schedule."

FAA regulations now allow 16 hours of flight duty for pilots, although some airlines have shorter limits.

Three years ago, an FAA study found that a tired pilot is two to four times more likely to have an accident. Jim Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said a change in the regulations is long overdue.

"The FAA continues to be a no-show on this issue," Hall said. "It's probably the No. 1 hazard that we have not effectively addressed in all forms of transportation."

FAA officials said the restrictions were unchanged because no one could agree on the proposals.

"There was never any consensus," said Elizabeth Isham Cory, an FAA spokeswoman. "We asked for comment, and the comments were all over the board. The industry is not giving us much direction, either. So basically, the regulations still stand."

Most of the more than 2,000 comments about the 1995 proposal opposed it, the FAA said.

Diana Cronan, a spokeswoman for the Air Transportation Association, said many of the carriers go beyond the FAA guidelines on flight-duty time.

"They've become even more stringent than what the FAA has put in place," she said.

Brannan Atkinson, spokesman for Corporate Airlines, which is based in Smyrna, Tenn., said the possibility of pilot fatigue being a factor in the Kirksville crash was "pure speculation." He also wouldn't speculate on why the company's approximately 60 pilots were exploring union affiliation.

"Like any company, we work really hard to provide our employees, including pilots, with competitive benefits and wages," Atkinson said. "At the same time, we absolutely support the right of the pilots to say 'yes' to unionization or also to say 'no."'

A spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, Keith Holloway, said the possibility of pilot fatigue would be one of the issues examined in an investigation that could last months.