a northern route? >> mr. chairman, no, that person would be trained extensively in the type of operations that he or she is going to be flying in. >> i would disagree from that statement at this point. the pilot has checked past the minimums for all types of operations and all types of weather and if his or her experience has been specifically in one area or one region of the country they could be thrown into the worst weather of the northeast of the mountain flying without further training. we have to talk about specific training at different points. when you move pilots around the system, must consider that training cycle and that is deficient in that area and. >> i will just wrap up with this quick shot. i ask these questions and i will be candid about it because i worry that because of economics

or whenever, we are trying toi economics or whenever, we are trying to do this sheet. en you end up with people trying to work of their hours to move out of the regional system. that is very worrisome and the burden is on the airlines to prove the safety of our travel. ..

>> and is a four-day, five-day conference. this is now two, three months after the, as you describe it, a very significant incident in a

regional airlines history. but yet when i look through the conference agenda of four and a half days i see very little mention of safety except in the last, let me just finish, and the last couple of days. now i'm assuming to the discussion of the conference you had conversations, i know as a former mayor wendy katrina disaster happened we spent a whole conference on it. because of the importance of safety and our communities are and so as you talk about the ideas and suggestions, i want to and i think senator johanns said it very simply gets on you, and i can own a look at what has been done and your comments today. so i want to take a couple of steps. if you want to quickly comment on the convention, that's great. and i'm not going to read the agenda because you know what was there and the kind of things you covered. it just seems that should have been, maybe it was in your

agenda that's on your website doesn't show that. it seemed such an important issue. >> if i might, to that point, senator. the reason why ira was created and every year for the last 34 years has been to promote the safety in the industry. the safety directors of our member airlines need for the entire length of that conference. that is a meeting at which everything is shared again to protect -- to protect these issues with the faa, with members of the ntsb, that are there. and it is not a public meeting so that they can share those experiences. and so you are exactly correct, that was not on a public website. they meet for 10 hours a day, and in a windowless room, and we would urge you when the next time when a meteor, they meet

regularly. i would urge members of this committee to come to -- you are invited. we would love to have either. >> would you share the outcome of your last conference meetings from that with the committee? it needs to be confidential or whatever the rules are i am happy to oblige. let me go to another russian that senator johanns asked and that is regarding the pay rate. i'm not going to -- it surprise me that you did not have the beginning salary or arrange. has the association ever done a salary study? i'm just guessing a much have had announced them, and if so can you provide to the committee? >> mr. chairman, senator, we will provide you the information of our member carriers, what is publicly available and we will get that to. >> and i guess i would push a little bit further. we have rules here. we can keep things proprietary

information so i would ask you to stretch further if you can. >> we will do so. >> the issue on the pay, and i know you mentioned that the compensation pay is not necessarily a driving factor. i would disagree with you so it's clear on that fact because again as former mayor managing over 500 police officers, 300 public safety people, paramedics and fire. what i never want them to have was a second job. i wanted one job, and one job was doing the safety of the community. so we paid them very well. that result was we had very limited problems because of the. because they didn't have to worry about their family and taking care of them. so i want to disagree with you on that and ask you a central question, and taking it as the chairman has talked about, 22, 23000. and alaska small plains regionals we have some great regionals and alaska from the ones that operate currently there, but the pay seems to me

an important factor in creating a quality so quality of a pilot doesn't literally and i use these words carefully fly to the majors. to keep them for long term careers. do you honestly think, and i'm going off the pilots association because they get a paycheck, that 22, 23000 is adequate for us to have people flying planes, i don't care if it's one person or 20 people or 50 people. >> two points to that that the pay for virtually everyone of our member airlines, all but one is collectively bargained. >> that's not my question. again, as a former mayor idea was collected bargaining aldine. is it the right kind of pay to have and should we require minimums that are guaranteed pay levels for pilots in regional planes? this is a question i asked last week to folks. >> senator, we believe that the

industry again, this very complex issue, we believe fundamentally that the quality of the people that we have flying is good. we would like to get even better. that's one of the reasons why we have strong boarded a number of issues that have been discussed today to get better training, to get better -- there is an investment here also. it's interesting at this committee, which is, you know, responsible for so much into the next generation of technology and spending billions of dollars that we believe that there could be some money spent on the human capital in our aviation safety system. and we would strongly support that. >> i'm running out of time to let me ask, if i can, to both of you i guess. to you and also transport and

captain prater if you want to answer this very quickly. is a very simple question, and that is the whole issue of downtime and faa's minimum that they currently have. i know each one of you have mentioned faa minimum standard requirements for pilots. do you think the minimums are too low? the minimum for pilots for downtown at what was training and other issues, do you think they are too low and need to be raised up? mr. maurer can we start with you? >> i assume you're talking about flight duty time? >> gayes. >> i think they are appropriate. we made a commitment at the faa's call to action on monday to enter into a science -based study to determine whether or not they are currently appropriate or not. there has been a recent proceeding on alto line flying that the faa has done. it was science -based.

plenty of skilled people available to do that. i think we probably ought to incorporate, the chairman has raised this issue of commuting. i think we ought to incorporate that into the process. and so we would strongly endorse a process being established by faa to look at flight duty time, current standard. how they might differ for regionals, for example, with lots of takeoffs and landings versus long haul. all that needs to be put on the table to my time is definitely up so you can be very quick on that response. >> i totally agree. and we believe there's been enough study, we are ready to move forward with a. we do believe there's enough science on the record. we're going to make our recommendations directly to the faa and work with the associations to move the process forward. >> can you share that with the committee when you do that? >> of course.

>> thank you there and much, mr. chairman. thank you for having this hearing. the tragedy of the flight brought the safety of our airline back into the public eye. i can tell you senator begich has his very own personal story for me. it was eerily reminiscent of the crash of paul wellstone's plane. he is the senator from minnesota, while that was a private plane, the issue was ice. the issues were pilot training and the issues were fatigue. so when i hear all of this from our hearing last week of underpaid pilots, pilots that are tired, and pilots that aren't earning enough money it reminds me very much of that. in addition to that here you have a factor up i was far away from their bases leading to long commutes and a lot of time spent waiting in airport. i know there have been some questions about fatigue, but i had a question about the reimbursement for hotel rooms in the evenings. i know that some of the larger airlines pay for hotel costs so

that the pilots can get sleep before shifts. average under our regional carriers doing the same thing? >> senator klobuchar, when pilots are on duty the minute they check in, their hotel costs on duty are paid for 100% by the company your they also receive a per diem, travel per diem for the same mainline in regional. there is no distinction between the way those policies are done between major airlines and the regional airline's. >> anyone else have something to add on that? >> i would say there is a fair amount of difference, but i think wha what you are going asa pilot getting adequate rest and a place to get adequate rest before he or she begins his first trip out of whatever, so they have been assigned to. and the answer is quite simply know, they are not provided by the airline's. >> so what they do is they fly

to start their first trip from somewhere, and there may not be a way for them to get reimbursed for a flight, for a hotel than because it's not in between flights. >> bright. >> was that the case here? because i know she was spending the day in the airport. >> i seriously doubt whether -- in fact, i can say without a doubt they were not given a place to get adequate rest were provided or compensated for a hotel room. so that they could get adequate rest. >> okay. we heard last week in regional pilots are more likely to become tired and fatigued by flying because they are flying more flights per day weather than one long flight. i'm sure that could happen with major carriers also. in other words, they're doing more takeoffs and landings in one day and they may be actually more prone to fatigue. do you think that's true? anyone want to take that on?

>> having spent more time fatigue and anybody else appear at the panel, i can say that there is a lot of different ways of lowering your readiness level, if you will. the fatigue of a 16 hour flight is different, but just as important as a pilot who was flying seven legs, seven different landings and takeoffs in the middle of the winter weather or summer weather. it is different but it all adds to the same place, that a tired or fatigued by the is not at the peak of his or her performance. >> go ahead. >> the issue of fatigue is a very serious one, and you know it is right at the top of our strategic safety initiative. including the exploration, this is since there is a lot of new sites out there on fatigue. and the possibility of exploring fatigue testing, let's start gathering the data. let's start testing people for fatigue. we had the ability to do that

now, but we don't currently. and we would strongly urge it. >> i think that we know, i've read enough sleep study to know that if people have -- don't have enough sleep, and i'm not at all disputing that testing is good and finding more details out about long flights, short flights is good but the bottom line is they don't have enough sleep because they are sitting there in an airport and they haven't slept the night before because they are flying from far away and they don't have enough money to pay for a hotel room. i think you're going to have a problem so that's what i was glad that administrator this past monday said he is going to propose a new rule on pilot rest requirements which i think would be very helpful. i wanted to talk briefly about the deicing issues because that was clearly an issue here, i think that the first officer told the pilot in the trash i have never seen icing conditions. i have never deiced. i have never experienced any of that. and this is clearly a factor in the crash. our regional aircraft more susceptible to problems

associated with icing than some of the larger aircraft? is it because where they are flying or at what levels they are flying? any thoughts on that? >> certainly some of the airplanes that fly in the lower levels, if you will, surface to 18, 20000 feet are more likely to pick up and spend a lot of time at that attitude at that altitude will pick up arising. even though i believe that most of them are more than inadequate to handle those conditions, but you can't stay in it for ever. the fact that the first officer, you know, this will sound strange but there has been such a focus on some sterile cockpit violations. i am relieved that we know that that first officer in the airplanes that i've never seen icing like this before. because we have all learned something. that is just as apparent as whether the cbr, we have learned something. she felt she wasn't prepared.

>> so what you're saying is you can have violations, things go wrong, but that she said this is such an indication that there were problems in training that you really don't need anything more than that? >> that putt sharing information between pilots, know what's going on. we talk regularly so that we know you know what i'm thinking that you have to voice some of the things that are going on in your head so that your first officer, your captain knows what you're doing or what you're planning to do. that is not a violation of sterile cockpit. that actually leads us to know in what's going on between the two, the dynamic. >> what you think may be someone else can answer this, can be done to train our regional pilots efficiently on how to fly in icing conditions? >> senator, we strongly are supportive of, you know, the training programs in our airlines are very robust. we are working with the faa, our

mainline partners, our employees to address, to make them as robust as they possibly can be. more training is always good. >> mr. mac? >> i guess what we learned, there are things available to take inexperienced pilots and put them with experienced pilots. so a mentoring program of some sort where you got an experienced pilot who has flown in eyes, who has seen it, who understand. knows what to do. put an end in express by with that, and perhaps we might have a better outcome. i mean, that's a hands-on way of learning about these things. there is only so much that can be done in a simulator. let's face it. >> i think icing would be harder condition to simulate. >> write. >> maybe i'm naïve about it. >> and along that line, i just wanted to make one other comment.

the regional airlines typically are flying less than two hour type flights, etc. you mentioned it. more takeoffs, more landings. as i have interviewed and talk with pilots, this is a critical time of flight, taking off and landing. were then should we have the best skill? and i'm not trying to take anything away from the majors, but should we not have the best pilots, the most skilled pilots flying the short trips? particularly if they are flying in these altitudes that are more susceptible to eyes, which that's another issue that, you know, pilots don't like to fly in it but they have to. >> okay. thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i would like to talk a little bit about maintenance. i have worked on this issue since i came to the senate on foreign repair stations, and i'm sure you are all aware that the ig has determined that regional

carriers are depending on outsourcing maintenance to a large extent. and my question to you, mr. cohen, is how much of the outsourced maintenance, i believe the ig said 50% of the regional airlines maintenance is being outsourced. what percentage of the outsourced maintenance work is going to faa certified repair stations? >> i'm glad you asked that question, senator, because it's a good opportunity to clarify some things in the ig report that i think the hearing in the other body didn't quite get straight. first of all, 100% of all the maintenance is being done in faa certified maintenance operation. otherwise it wouldn't be allowed to fly. number two, i think that, if i can clarify, what the ig study is, actually the regional airlines outsource less of it

overseas than even the mainline carriers to do. virtually all of the maintenance by the regional airline members is done here in this country, either by themselves, on their own to an faa certified maintenance operation here in the united states, including our manufacturers which have locations in the united states in miami, in tennessee and west virginia. so i hope that maybe a long way to answer your question,. >> no, but i'm interested in what you said though because i am sure you are aware that it is perfectly acceptable to the faa for the repair work to be done in noncertified stations. you're aware of that, right? that you are maintaining today that all of the maintenance work is being done, this is one of the problems we have right now,

with a repair station does not have to be certified by the faa in order for it to be utilized by either the commercial carriers or the regional carriers. are you aware that? >> senator, again, it's my understanding on the maintenan maintenance, the heady maintenance here that we are talking about, the heavy maintenance checks, the cnv checks, are conducted by what i'm assuming our faa certified -- >> if you would check that it has i would be surprised if that were the fact that we have done a fair amount of work on this issue, and there are a large number of not just kick the tires, but serious and substantial maintenance and repair work that is being done by noncertified repair stations, both foreign and domestic.

and so i would certainly appreciate you following up on that because one of the issues, of course, is why do we have certified repair stations if people aren't required to use them. and that's, in fact, the legislation that senators specter and i have introduced would require you to use the certified repair stations. as i said to faa couple different times in this room, i assume getting one certified is a good thing. if it's a good thing why are we requiring people to use them, and if it's not a good thing why are we spending taxpayer money supporting them? it doesn't make sense to me just using good old fashion common sense that we would go through a certification process and do not require it. so if you would get back to me i would really appreciate it because the faa does not have good data on this. they admit they do not know how much of the maintenance is being

done at certified versus noncertified repair stations. >> senator, we will get you all the information. >> mr. may, same question to you for the national character can you give me any kind of figure as to what percentage of the maintenance is being done in certified versus noncertified repair stations? >> i do not have that number at hand but i would be happy to provide you. >> that would be terrific. while you are at it, mr. cohen has represented that none of this is being outsourced beyond the united states in terms of the regional carriers. i am confident it is being outsourced beyond the united states for the large commercial carriers. does your association have a number of what percentage of that maintenance is being outsourced? i don't -- i'm sure we had the answer to that. i don't happen to have it within. i would be happy to provide. >> if you have it that would be terrific. it has been a very difficult -- the information is difficult to come by from the faa. they have not i don't think

prioritized looking at this issue, and i don't think the american flying public realizes to what extent maintenance has been outsourced in an effort to cut costs, and what one of the problem is in that many of these places there are not even alcohol or drug testing. it seems weird to me that we have domestic certified repair stations, and because we don't have as many of them anymore because so many have been outsourced, there are faa inspectors that hang out there, that are really looking over the shoulder. and then you travel to indones indonesia, and if there is ever an faa inspector that shows up, by the way the united states pays for that, the taxpayers pay the cost of the faa inspectors to go look at foreign repair stations, not the airline. so the taxpayers are actually underwriting these outsourcing. they aren't even doing drug and alcohol tests. as we talked about in his

hearing before they are actually locations that have been on the state department watch list for terrorist activity where there have been repair stations that have been utilized. so if you would get back to us with whatever information your associations have on this information, i think will be helpful as we move forward trying to get these important reforms done in the area of maintenance and repair. thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator mccaskill, thank you very much. we will attempt to get all of the information. on the inspection and repair stations. we have in fact written about one of the carriers that flies an empty airbus 322 el salvador for repair and implies an empty 320 back to united states after having it repaired in el salvador, or inspected or maintained. my guess is that's probably another issue of dollars and cents. let me go back to just a moment ago on icing. i just pulled the transcript

again. this copilots that i have never seen icing conditions. i have never deiced. i have never deiced. i have never experienced any of that. i don't want to have to experience that, make those kind of call. i freaked out, i haven't seen this much ice and thought oh, my gosh, we're going to crash. the actual transcript is of a copilot that appears to me to have at minimum training in icing conditions. now, the reason i mention this is because the training issue has been on the table here. what kind of training does someone have in that cockpit to fly in the conditions into which the airline is headed. if they are headed to buffalo, new york, in the winter one would expect you would encounter icing conditions of some sort. i come from the state of north dakota. i learned to fly many, many years ago, and i've been on airplanes, small airplanes with a lot of buildup on the wings. watching it with flashlights,

and so i float in a lot of icing with pilots and with others. and so i think it's an important question. how much training exists before someone is put into a cockpit for the specific kind of conditions they are likely to encounter. i want to ask about this issue of the time in an airplane because i think that's also important. in the buffalo crashed, we were told that carrier had training that trains their pilots on the stick shaker but not the stick pusher. and so if that's the case i guess the first question is if you're in a cockpit with a device called a stick pusher, which is going to be a device that is going to automatically move you towards some sort of safety function in that light, and have never had experience with it or not been trained in

it, isn't that a significant deficiency and how could that happen? captain prater, can you tell us? >> i would be glad to. first of all, every airplane has different characteristics, different safety features. and pilots should be trained to the proficiency in each and every one of those. i cannot testify towards the conditions on the training of this individual airmen or cruel, but i can say more generally is that there is a huge cost to training airmen so it does come down to dollars and cents. i have severe concerns that the regional industry who looks at their pilots as, if you will, part-time help, training help, may not want to spend as much money making sure they are aware of each and every facet. training has been shortened over my three decades as an airline pilot. i think w n