I get the point of the letter and agree that it is poorly timed. I think this all boils down to what our industry has become today and that is the lowest common denominator. Regional, Cargo, major, etc. Whatever part of the industry you are in you see it everytime you go to training. You can probably point out pilots on the seniority list and say "WTFO, how is this person still employed?" We train to the lowest common denominator and our airlines part out routes. Take Delta. A passenger buys a ticket on Delta but could fly on any of a number of airlines. Example, while waiting to sign up for a jumpseat in EWR on DAL the passenger in front of me was asking which gate her flight to Burlington, VT was going out of. I looked at her ticket, a Delta ticket, but the flight was being flown under the CO code and operated by Expressjet. The passenger thought she bought a ticket on Delta. This is the way of the industry and that is divide and conquer while maintaining the operation with the lowest costs to keep shareholders happy. Put a$$es in the seats and get them from A to B preferrebly the same day. Hiring a young pup (no slam as I was one of them at ASA) at $19 or $20 per hour to fly 50 to 70 passengers at a time is how management roles. This is simply a by-product when you have a flight crew with less than 6000 hours combined flying a high performance, state-of-the-art airplane in to moderate icing at night which was probably the last leg of a very long day doing hub turns in EWR. That said, with all the factors and a more experienced flight crew would the outcome be different? We will never know. I do know that a lot of the decisions I make are based on past experiences. We only have 1 measuring stick for experience as airline pilots and that is flight time. So far, in the last few years, we have had a relatively inexperienced crew stall a CRJ at FL410 "having a little fun", bad judgement. We shall see what the outcome of 3407 is.
Cheers
