Flight Safety Information - August 29, 2022 No.165 In This Issue : Incident: American A321 near Bozeman on Aug 26th 2022, engine shut down in flight : Incident: Peace B733 at Lagos on Aug 27th 2022, bird strike : Incident: Ryanair B738 at Tenerife on Aug 27th 2022, rejected takeoff : Accident: Delta A321 enroute on Aug 26th 2022, turbulence injures 3 passengers : Incident: Jet2 B738 near Thessaloniki on Aug 23rd 2022, one of the pilots incapacitated : 2 Air France pilots suspended after fighting in cockpit : Pilots from a bankrupt airline were just offered jobs by a competitor without a single interview : Volaris Fires Pilot Who Recorded Near Accident : Rethinking Use Of Air-Safety Principles To Reduce Fatal Hospital Errors : Unorthodox: A São Paulo Airport Is Using Drones To Patrol Its Surroundings : Mesa Airlines just increased entry-level pilot pay by 118% to $100 an hour, beating out American's recent salary hike as the battle for regional pilots heats up : ALPA - 66th Air Safety Forum - September 12-15, 2022 - JOIN US! Incident: American A321 near Bozeman on Aug 26th 2022, engine shut down in flight An American Airlines Airbus A321-200, registration N156UW performing flight AA-854 from Seattle,WA to Charlotte,NC (USA), was enroute at FL310 about 70nm west of Bozeman,MT (USA) when the crew needed to shut an engine (CFM56) down and diverted to Bozeman for a safe landing on runway 12 about 30 minutes later. Passengers reported the crew announced a problem with an engine, that was shut down as result. The aircraft diverted to Bozeman. Some passengers reported Delta Airlines offered to transport passengers to Atlanta on their next flight provided American Airlines would pay for the tickets, which was agreed. A number of passengers therefore praised Delta Airlines for getting them to Atlanta faster than American Airlines could have done. A replacement American Airlines Airbus A321-200 registration N975UY was dispatched to Bozeman the following day, resumed the flight with the remaining passengers and reached Charlotte with a delay of 23.5 hours. https://avherald.com/h?article=4fd737ea&opt=0 Incident: Peace B733 at Lagos on Aug 27th 2022, bird strike An Air Peace Boeing 737-300, flight P4-7154 from Lagos to Owerri (Nigeria), was climbing out of Lagos when a large bird of prey impacted the left hand main gear and got stuck in it affecting its operation. The crew decided to return to Lagos for a safe landing. https://avherald.com/h?article=4fd72fc8&opt=0 Incident: Ryanair B738 at Tenerife on Aug 27th 2022, rejected takeoff A Ryanair Boeing 737-800, registration EI-EFC performing flight FR-6763 from Tenerife South,CI (Spain) to Bournemouth,EN (UK), was accelerating for takeoff from Tenerife's runway 07 at high speed (about 150 knots over ground). The aircraft slowed safely stopping the aircraft on the runway about 870 meters/2850 feet short of the runway end, however, the brakes overheated and locked up disabling the aircraft on the runway. There were no injuries. Spain's ATC reported the crew rejected takeoff for safety reasons, the brakes overheated and locked up. A passenger reported the aircraft suddenly veered right, then the brakes came on really hard. Fire crews were unable to cool the brakes down. They disembarked about an hour later and were bussed to the terminal. The airport remained closed for about 4.5 hours until the aircraft could be towed off the runway. https://avherald.com/h?article=4fd72a3c&opt=0 Accident: Delta A321 enroute on Aug 26th 2022, turbulence injures 3 passengers A Delta Airlines Airbus A321-200, registration N344DN performing flight DL-394 from Orlando,FL to Salt Lake City,UT (USA) with 143 passengers and 6 crew, was enroute at FL340 when the aircraft encountered turbulence causing injuries to 3 passengers. The aircraft continued to Salt Lake City for a safe landing. Two passengers were treated by paramedics at the airport and released, one passenger was taken to a hospital. The aircraft remained on the ground in Salt Lake City for about two hours before resuming service. The airline reported the aircraft encountered minor turbulence midflight, three passengers sustained injuries. The passengers were assessed by paramedics after landing in Salt Lake City, one of them was taken to a hospital. https://avherald.com/h?article=4fd6d491&opt=0 Incident: Jet2 B738 near Thessaloniki on Aug 23rd 2022, one of the pilots incapacitated A Jet2.com Boeing 737-800, registration G-GDFW performing flight LS-1239 from Birmingham,EN (UK) to Antalya (Turkey), was enroute at FL370 about 110nm northnortheast of Thessaloniki (Greece) when one of the pilots fainted prompting the other pilot to divert the aircraft to Thessaloniki, where the aircraft landed safely on runway 16 about 23 minutes after leaving FL370. Passengers reported they had just gone through turbulence when a commotion started at the front of the aircraft. Subsequently there were told one of the pilots had fainted and they were diverting to Thessaloniki. After landing in Greece they had to wait for an hour until the ambulance arrived. The airline reported one of the pilots on board felt unwell prompting a precautionary diversion to Thessaloniki. A replacement crew was dispatched to Thessaloniki and continued the flight. The aircraft remained on the ground for about 9 hours, then continued the flight to Antalya reaching Antalya with a total delay of 9 hours. https://avherald.com/h?article=4fd6d2b6&opt=0 2 Air France pilots suspended after fighting in cockpit Air France pilots are under scrutiny after recent incidents that have prompted French investigators to call for tougher safety protocols PARIS -- Fisticuffs in the cockpit, leaving a leaky engine running while cruising over Africa -- Air France pilots are under scrutiny after recent incidents that have prompted French investigators to call for tougher safety protocols. Two Air France pilots were suspended after physically fighting in the cockpit on a Geneva-Paris flight in June, an Air France official said Sunday. The flight continued and landed safely, and the dispute didn't affect the rest of the flight, the official said, stressing the airline’s commitment to safety. Switzerland’s La Tribune reported that the pilot and co-pilot had a dispute shortly after takeoff, and grabbed each other by their collars after one apparently hit the other. Cabin crew intervened and one crew member spent the flight in the cockpit with the pilots, the report said. News of the fight emerged after France’s air investigation agency, BEA, issued a report Wednesday saying that some Air France pilots lack rigor in respecting procedures during safety incidents. It focused on a fuel leak on an Air France flight from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo to Paris in December 2020, when pilots rerouted the plane but didn’t cut power to the engine or land as soon as possible, as leak procedure requires. The plane landed safely in Chad, but the BEA report warned that the engine could have caught fire. It mentioned three similar cases between 2017 and 2022, and said some pilots are acting based on their own analysis of the situation instead of safety protocols. Air France said it is carrying out a safety audit in response. It pledged to follow the BEA's recommendations, which include allowing pilots to study their flights afterward and making training manuals stricter about sticking to procedure. The airline noted that it flies thousands of flights daily and the report mentions only four such safety incidents. Air France pilots unions have insisted that security is paramount to all pilots and defended pilot actions during emergency situations. The BEA also investigated an incident in April involving an Air France flight from New York’s JFK airport that suffered flight control problems on approach to its landing in Paris. https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/air-france-pilots-suspended-fighting-cockpit-88971747 Pilots from a bankrupt airline were just offered jobs by a competitor without a single interview New York (CNN Business)Pilots are in high demand lately -- such high demand, in fact, that pilots from the recently defunct ExpressJet Airlines are finding themselves with new job offers, without so much as an interview, days after their employer declared bankruptcy. Piedmont Airlines, a regional airline based in Maryland and subsidiary of American Airlines, announced Thursday that it would offer ExpressJet pilots conditional job offers based on seniority. The offer is based off of language in Piedmont's pilot contract, negotiated in 2021 with the largest pilot union in the world, the Airline Pilots Association, that allows for the company to offer a "safe haven for employment" for pilots at "distressed" carriers, according to the company. The offer isn't just coming from Piedmont Airlines, either. American Airlines subsidiary Envoy Air "has the same provisions and we are offering ExpressJet/Aha pilots conditional job offers with no interview," according to Ric Wilson, Vice President of Flight Operations from Envoy Air. Atlanta-based ExpressJet operated over 450 aircraft at its peak, but pandemic-induced woes proved a fatal blow for the regional carrier. The airline, which calls itself a "reboot" of the company formerly flying as Delta Connection and United Express, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday in Delaware and ceased operations, according to the company website. It pointed to stifled growth, rising costs and lower revenue due to the pandemic. "No one wants to see an airline fail, ever. We know that ExpressJet pilots are well-trained aviators who know the Embraer 145 [aircraft], and we are very pleased to make this transition as easy as possible for them," said Matt Kernan, Piedmont's Director of Operations, in a press release Thursday. "This is an opportunity to get these pilots significant pay and bonus increases, expedited job offers and in the process, help Piedmont grow its fleet." The effort to snap up experienced pilots from the downtrodden company comes as Piedmont looks to expand its business and compete in an aviation sector with a thirst for pilots. Despite efforts by airlines to hire more pilots, the US pilot shortage is still forecast to get worse. And that will especially be true for the regional airlines like Piedmont serving smaller cities on behalf of the major carriers, like American Airlines. It is mainly those pilots who are being hired away to fly the larger jets. Based on data from consulting firm Oliver Wyman's fleet forecast and models for industry growth, there is expected to be shortage of almost 30,000 pilots in North America by 2032 if the industry fails to address its staffing problems. That's almost four times higher than this year's anticipated gap of 8,000 pilots, which has already proven to be problematic. This shortage is hitting regional airlines like Piedmont especially hard. According to the Regional Airline Association (RAA), two dozen markets served by regional airports have lost half of their service in the last three years — and that doesn't include the rounds of cuts planned for later this year. Another 42 markets have lost between one third and half of service in that time frame. Behind the pilot shortage is a confluence of trends, including the retirement of aging Baby Boomers and significantly fewer job candidates coming from the military, as the use of unmanned drones steadily increased and there were fewer deployments. Covid-19 exacerbated the shortfall, with airlines offering pilots early retirement at the height of the pandemic. When travel demand surged in 2021, the pilot shortfall was so dramatic that it hampered the airlines' ability to ramp back up, leading to flight delays and cancellations. "Communities were losing air service for the better part of the last decade," said Faye Malarkey Black, CEO of the RAA. "You don't have to lose all your service to lose connectivity to the system. When you lose much of your frequency, businesses won't want to locate in a place." https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/26/tech/piedmont-pilots-job-offer/index.html Volaris Fires Pilot Who Recorded Near Accident Mexican airline Volaris has fired a pilot for recording a near collision on a runway in Mexico City. While the airline is technically justified in doing this, there’s an interesting twist to the story. Why Volaris fired a pilot for recording In early May 2022, two Volaris Airbus A320s nearly collided at Mexico City Airport (MEX). One plane was lined up on the runway waiting to take off, while another plane was on final approach to the same runway, and they were within seconds of a catastrophe. It was only when another pilot warned of the situation that the plane on short final performed a go around, and crisis was averted. At the time we even got a video of the incident, taken from just short of the runway. The video was clearly taken from a pilot in the cockpit, just short of the hold short line of the runway. As it turns out, the pilot who took that video has been fired by Volaris. Specifically, first officer Libertad Salmeron was fired by Volaris for not following the sterile cockpit procedure, whereby pilots are only supposed to be performing essential tasks while at below 10,000 feet. Obviously using one’s phone and recording a video is not considered an essential task. At the same time, an argument could be made that having a recording of such a serious incident would be useful to investigators. In Salmeron’s defense, she allegedly got the captain’s permission to record this, and it was also this crew that warned of what was about to happen, and potentially prevented catastrophe. The plane’s brakes were also on, so it was arguably a pretty low risk situation. Volaris has confirmed in a statement that this pilot has been fired: “Volaris ended its working relationship with First Official Salmeron for not guaranteeing the fulfillment of sterile cabin procedures and the care of our clients.” Did she technically violate rules? Yes, of course. But her crew also potentially avoided a huge accident, so you’d think you could balance that out a bit. It sure seems like Volaris was looking for a reason to justify firing this pilot, since of course a video of two Volaris planes nearly crashing isn’t a good look (even if the pilots weren’t at fault). Aeromexico hires pilot fired by Volaris Usually it’s rough to lose your job as an airline pilot, especially if you’re fired for not following procedures. However, this story appears to have a happy ending. Aviacionline reports that Aeromexico has hired the pilot that Volaris fired, and that she’s currently being trained as a first officer on the Boeing 737. Many people didn’t feel great about Volaris’ decision here, and for that matter airline pilot union ASPA also expressed concerns about Volaris’ decision. So it seems that Aeromexico saw an opportunity here. Volaris fired a pilot for violating sterile cockpit rules, after she recorded a near accident between two other Volaris jets. In the first officer’s defense, she had asked the captain for permission, the brakes were set, and it was her crew that informed controllers of the danger. Still, clearly the airline didn’t appreciate the video being out there, and decided to take action. It’s not all bad news for the pilot, though, as she has allegedly landed a job at Aeromexico. https://onemileatatime.com/news/volaris-fires-pilot-recorded-accident/ Rethinking Use Of Air-Safety Principles To Reduce Fatal Hospital Errors Andy Pasztor Adam Andersen With COVID-19 deaths dramatically down from earlier peaks, US health care providers still confront a different nationwide emergency: hospital errors that kill an estimated 150,000 patients annually. Increasingly, physicians and hospital administrators say fulsome embrace of air-safety principles is likely to be a big part of any solution. But many are rethinking how to make such efforts more viable than in the past. Long before COVID-19 devastated millions of families and pushed thousands of doctors and nurses nearly to the breaking point, medical leaders sought to learn from the airline industry’s impressive safety record to reduce a veritable epidemic of surgical and other treatment mistakes. Now, with greater stresses on medical staff, supply chains, and safety measures, developing a new vision to reassess application of aviation practices to combat deadly treatment errors appears more vital than ever. Based on recent evidence, overall hospital safety has declined since the onset of the pandemic. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study covering more than 2,900 hospitals revealed a significant increase in bloodstream infections associated with intravenous catheters over a three-month period in 2020, versus the same quarter of 2019. A separate study of 148 HCA Healthcare-affiliated hospitals showed surges in various treatment-related infections between March and September 2020. Scheduled domestic airlines transported more than eight billion people over the past 13 years without a single passenger crash fatality—a phenomenal feat surpassing expectations. US hospital blunders, by contrast, needlessly cost an estimated 400 patient lives each day, comparable to a packed jumbo jet crashing every 24 hours. What accounts for this discrepancy? Veteran leaders from both realms say health care has struggled to fully understand and translate aviation’s safety processes to improve patient safety. Hurdles include reliance on limited techniques such as checklists, technical difficulties sharing safety data across the industry, and cultural challenges persuading veteran physicians to act more like team players alongside junior doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff. Barely a few months ago, the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general concluded that hospital safety improvements generally have stalled, with Medicare patients suffering preventable harm or serious complications effectively at the same rate as in 2008. Three Strategies To Improve Safety Experts point to health care’s failures to fully incorporate three fundamental strategies relied on by airlines and their federal regulators: extensive voluntary reporting of serious incidents; prompt and widespread dissemination of information about life-threatening hazards; and user-friendly equipment designs intended to prevent a repeat of the same fatal errors. In response, from Capitol Hill offices to hospital boardrooms there is escalating discussion of how to better incorporate such lessons. One example is renewed debate over creating a National Patient Safety Board, patterned after the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which probes aviation accidents and makes public safety recommendations. Such an entity could provide the framework for collecting and distributing essential data about medical mistakes. Systemic lapses in hospital safety were highlighted by the Institute of Medicine’s seminal 1999 report, “To Err is Human,” which sparked the modern patient safety movement. Over the next two decades, Atul Gawande’s internationally acclaimed book, The Checklist Manifesto, and follow-on publications popularized a bevy of aviation-derived safeguards. But health care needs to move beyond those early steps. Undue emphasis on medical checklists, mimicking an aviation procedure initially developed many decades ago, frequently impedes reliance on newer and more effective safety techniques. Checklists’ usefulness in medicine has been oversold, according to Raj Ratwani, director of MedStar Health’s National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare. After initially embracing them above other safety practices, physicians and hospital administrators have opted for more sophisticated safety tools, including robust data sharing, enhanced teamwork, and greater responsibilities for junior staff. Non-Punitive Reporting Non-punitive incident reporting and swift distribution of details about dangerous “near misses” helped revolutionize modern air safety. Too often, however, those concepts falter in hospital settings due to institutional opposition or fear of management reprisals. “Progress has been very slow reducing deaths” by applying proactive air-safety practices “to nearly all medical specialties,” according to David Mayer, head of the safety research arm of Maryland-based MedStar Health. “When it comes to acknowledging and documenting mistakes,” he says, “we are still not where aviation is.” Christopher Hart, a former chairman of the NTSB, explains it more bluntly. “Information sharing in health care is pitiful compared to aviation.” Promoting transparency and empowering reporting of treatment errors “requires a major cultural change,” says Kathleen Bartholomew, a former nurse and hospital manager, but “that mindset never took hold” in much of medicine. “Nurses are still getting fired for bringing up safety concerns,” she adds, while physicians often remain reluctant to criticize colleagues. Disincentives for safety reporting prompted nationwide headlines during the recent trial of a former Tennessee nurse, RaDonda Vaught, who was convicted of two felonies for a fatal medication error. Various health care organizations such as the American Nurses Association and the American Hospital Association expressed concern that criminalization of treatment errors would further impede voluntary reporting and data sharing. (She was sentenced to three years’ probation.) Data Sharing Medicine already has hundreds of national and state registries collecting data on patient outcomes, complications, and best practices. They are all confidential and shielded from legal discovery. In theory, the model is similar to air-safety reporting. Yet, unlike aviation, there is no comprehensive database aimed at preventing hospital errors. Information often is contained in digital silos that communicate poorly, if at all, with each other. Typically, incident data are used by the government to financially punish hospitals for safety lapses—but only after problems occur. That discourages timely public disclosure of errors, which translates into limited opportunities for ambitious data mining to uncover precursors, root causes, and essential takeaways. Generally lacking are urgent recommendations that, in turn, can be quickly adopted by other health care providers. Instead, medical feedback loops primarily focus on reporting the incidence of adverse events. Without more thorough voluntary reporting and deeper data analyses, experts say hospitals are likely to find it difficult to implement effective and sustainable safety programs. User-Friendly Medical Devices And Technology Moreover, health care hasn’t followed aviation’s lead incorporating human-centered technology. Modern jetliner cockpits are designed—and then evaluated before and after planes enter service—to ensure the automation they rely on is user friendly. So far, that principle isn’t ubiquitous in operating rooms or other clinical settings. “What I don’t see are human-factors experts” who are “designing the equipment but also designing the processes” to avoid human mistakes, says Hart, a board member of the Joint Commission that accredits hospitals. More user-friendly medical equipment, combined with advanced electronic health records and predictive analytics, could yield dramatic safety improvements for patients. Potential benefits could resemble the way highly integrated cockpits and in-depth data analyses have revved up airline safety since the late 1990s. At this point, most hospitals rely on software designed to prevent mistakenly giving excessive doses of drugs to infants or providing adult patients with medications that should never be taken together. Another safety push entails installing common designs of switches and control knobs on different brands of equipment, including defibrillators and infusion pumps, to prevent staff confusion that can lead to serious mistakes. For their part, aircraft makers and equipment suppliers want to harness artificial intelligence to pinpoint emerging dangers. Proposed safeguards, for instance, include systems able to autonomously pinpoint airports, perform essential radio communications, and actually land aircraft and then safely stop them on runways if pilot actions suggest confusion or incapacitation. Without any human intervention, cockpits of the future also likely will carry out emergency maneuvers to prevent deadly stalls and avoid collisions with other aircraft, mountains, or even man-made obstructions. Eric Horvitz, Microsoft’s chief scientific officer, says that path could unlock “the sleeping giant of health care” innovation. Tech companies and hospitals have already rolled out solutions to help identify patients most likely to deteriorate or suffer complications. Artificial intelligence (AI) champions also point to existing aviation technology that allows some pilots, immediately after completing a flight, to review a digital and video replay of their performance and compare it to those of other pilots. Similarly, certain robot-assisted surgical systems use algorithms based on previous procedures to help surgeons move the controls more smoothly. And more hospitals are tapping into AI networks to identify emergency department or intensive-care patients at highest risk for strokes or other life-threatening conditions. But here, too, medicine appears to be significantly trailing aviation. Aircraft manufacturers already have devised cockpit features that anticipate pilot reactions and can unilaterally take over flight-control systems in dire situations. Physicians, however, continue to resist ceding decision making or control of patient procedures to computer networks—no matter how advanced they may be. Further complicating matters is that while AI-enabled software and devices are pitched as time-saving, cost-cutting, and more accurate solutions to complex medical procedures, the Food and Drug Administration is playing catch-up policing fledgling initiatives fraught with technical and ethical questions. Unless the medical community re-envisions how reliable, time-tested aviation principles can boost hospital safety, the status quo portends many more years of well-meaning discussions. What’s likely to remain missing, however, are essential changes to reduce the tragedy of deadly patient errors. https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/rethinking-use-air-safety-principles-reduce-fatal-hospital-errors Unorthodox: A São Paulo Airport Is Using Drones To Patrol Its Surroundings These drones will identify possible threats such as fire outbreaks and irregular trespassing. The São Paulo Guarulhos International Airport (GRU) has begun using drones as part of its Security Work Plan. In recent days, GRU Airport, the concessionaire that manages the airport, acquired two unmanned aerial vehicles from Dahua Technology to monitor and protect the hub’s perimeter. Security drones More often than not, drones are associated with putting at risk the operations at commercial airports around the world. For instance, between 2019 and 2020, there were drone sightings at several airports such as Gatwick, Manchester (England), Frankfurt (Germany), Perth (Scotland), Tijuana (Mexico, with even a drone possibly impacting an Aeromexico aircraft), and more. For Guarulhos Airport authorities, the drone has become more than a threat to daily operations; it is now a tool to protect the surroundings of the hub. The concessionaire has recently acquired two drones to monitor and protect the airport’s perimeter, identifying possible threats such as fire outbreaks, animal species that live near the airport, and irregular trespassing. These drones will even do some maintenance tasks, such as the inspection of runways and providing guidance in logistics and traffic decisions in some instances. According to Admilson Silva, director of operations at GRU Airport, the technology will be a very important tool for the day-to-day management of the airport. “The arrival of these drones will help us identify possible problems and act quickly to solve them,” he said. Drones helping the airline industry The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are an excellent tool for the airline industry. Since they can reach difficult spots more quickly and easily than a human, drones can be used on a wide variety of tasks, such as maintenance, security, photography, and more. For instance, LATAM Airlines Group recently started employing drones to inspect aircraft fuselages at its MRO facilities in São Carlos, Brazil. Korean Air does the same and slashes plane inspection times by 60%. Brussels Airports used drones last year to scare away birds. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) used a drone as part of a simulated exercise of an Airbus A380 accident and fire on a taxiway at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. In the case of São Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport, the recently acquired drones have two thermal camera devices, two sets of batteries, and two sets of propeller reserves. They are robust pieces of equipment and can withstand the numerous gusts of wind that the site constantly receives. A drone at Guarulhos International Airport Drones can perform several safety tasks at airports (for instance, they can help in case of an accident, as it can be seen in the gallery above; pictures taken by the FAA). São Paulo Guarulhos International Airport recently acquired two drones to monitor and protect the airports perimeter. The drones can be used in rainy conditions and in the dark. In addition, the cameras have 30X Optical Zoom with StarLight technology that allows this equipment to be used even in low light environments, which are able to identify people, animals, and objects at a distance. GRU Airport added that the drones were tested under the supervision of technicians from Dahua Technology and the concessionaire. After the tests, the remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) will be able to perform countless other predictive and behavioral analyses since they have onboard Artificial Intelligence technology. https://simpleflying.com/sao-paulo-airport-drone-perimeter-patrol/ Mesa Airlines just increased entry-level pilot pay by 118% to $100 an hour, beating out American's recent salary hike as the battle for regional pilots heats up • Mesa Airlines pilots are about to receive a massive pay raise, according to a Friday union announcement. • The regional carrier will pay entry-level first officers $100/hr and first-year captains $150/hr. • Mesa has been losing pilots to mainline carriers as labor shortages continue to plague the industry. American Airlines thought it won this summer's battle over regional pilot pay — until underdog Mesa Airlines stepped up to the bargaining table. Mesa Airlines pilots will soon go from being some of the worst-paid pilots to having the highest wages in the regional airline industry, according to a Friday union announcement. Mesa operates approximately 457 flights a day and flies partner planes branded as American Eagle, United Express, and DHL. Starting September 15, the carrier will offer starting wages of $100 an hour for entry-level first officers, and $150 an hour for first-year captains. Under the new contract, Mesa pilots will receive a 118% and 172% pay increase respectively, The Points Guy first reported. Captains with 20 years of experience will be paid $215 an hour, the Air Line Pilots Association said. The announcement comes as labor shortages continue to plague the aviation industry amid soaring travel demand, leading to a summer riddled with flight cancellations and delays. A shortage of trained pilots has been felt especially at the regional level. Smaller carriers like Mesa — where new pilots tend to start out their careers — have struggled to retain talent this year as mainline operators like American with more competitive pay poach regional staff. "The pilot shortage is the single greatest threat to the industry I have witnessed since 9/11," Mesa Airlines CEO Jonathan Ornstein said at a Senate Commerce aviation subcommittee hearing in May, according to Reuters. He added that Mesa Airlines "lost almost 5% of our pilot workforce in one month as major airlines and operators of larger jets hired our pilots." In June, American Airlines raised pilot wages at two of its regional carriers, Envoy and Piedmont. Under the new contract, entry-level first officers are paid $90 an hour and first-year captains are paid $146 an hour — rates slightly lower than what Mesa is now offering. "With strong competition in the regional industry, today's LOA offers the compensation Mesa needs to remain competitive and attract and retain experienced, qualified pilots," Capt. Chris Gill, Mesa ALPA Master Executive Council chair, said in a press release Friday. "We're happy to see management and our partners recognize the value of Mesa pilots." https://www.businessinsider.com/mesa-airlines-american-airlines-regional-pilot-pay-increase-labor-shortage-2022-8 66th Air Safety Forum – Join Us! PERSEVERANCE THROUGH STRENGTH AND UNITY September 12 – September 15, 2022 | Omni Shoreham Hotel | Washington, DC safetyforum.alpa.org CONFIRMED KEYNOTES INCLUDE • Capt. Joe DePete – President, Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l • The Honorable Jennifer Homendy – Chair, National Transportation Safety Board • The Honorable David Pekoske – Acting Administrator, Transportation Security Administration • Mr. Nick Robinson, Director General Civil Aviation, Transport Canada • Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger – Former U.S. Ambassador to ICAO • Mr. Dieudonne Kazzembe, Aero Club Foundation Scholarship Recipient Agenda and registration information can be found at safetyforum.alpa.org THANK YOU, SPONSORS & EXHIBITORS! Sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities are available. Email airsafetyforum@alpa.org for more information. Curt Lewis