Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger Speaks to Congress - Stresses Need for Better Pay and Conditions in Industry to Retain Good Pilots

The pilot & crew of U.S. Airways flight 1549 spoke to Congress today during a House Subcommittee Hearing. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger stressed the importance of providing good pay and benefits so that quality pilots can be recruited and retained in the Commercial aviation industry. To make his point, he highlighted recent pay cuts and the threat that this situation poses to the flying public.

Watch Video of Hearing

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

While the pigs on Wall Street and our revered banking industry earn billions for ruining the economy, true American heroes like Captain Sullenberger and his crue tell us their salaries have been cut by 40% and their pensions are worthless! This is the America that we are living in and it is only destined to go down as all preceeding corrupt civilizations have.

Truthiz said...

AP:
[ Sullenberger, a 58-year-old who joined a US Airways predecessor in 1980, and his copilot, Jeffrey B. Skiles, told the panel that experienced pilots are quitting because of deep cuts in their pay and benefits.

Skiles said unless federal laws are revised to improve labor-management relations "experienced crews in the cockpit will be a thing of the past." Sullenberger added that without experienced pilots "we will see negative consequences to the flying public."

Sullenberger testified that his pay has been cut 40 percent in recent years and his pension has been terminated and replaced with a promise "worth pennies on the dollar" from the federally created Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. These cuts followed a wave of airline bankruptcies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks compounded by the current recession, he said.

He said the problems began with deregulation of the industry in the 1970s. Then "the bankruptcies were used by some as a fishing expedition to get what they could not get in normal times," Sullenberger said of the airlines.

He said the problems began with the deregulation of the industry in the 1970s. The reduced compensation has placed "pilots and their families in an untenable financial situation," Sullenberger said. "I do not know a single professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps. ]

Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PLANE_SPLASHDOWN_HEARING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

All I want to know is WHEN are the arrest warrants going be issued?!

I want to see every one of those LYING, THIEVING-azz, TRAITOROUS bastards__G.W. Bush, Cheney, the entire neoCON regime and Wall Street Gangsta “elites” _handcuffed, marched before Hague (OR some other highly respected court), tried and CONVICTED of HIGH-TREASON-War crimes and other related felonies_then sentenced to Guantanamo prison for the rest of their WORTHLESS lives!

Talk about WASTED oxygen!!!

Anonymous said...

Truthiz got it right!
Hey! Here's an idea if you think the pilot flying your plane deserves to be well paid and if you think that ATC that is forced to work 16 hours straight should have more rights. Let's claw back the 4 billion dollars of taxpayer money that was used for wall street bonuses and give it to them. I would say Captain Sullenberger had pretty good performance along with a touch of the hand of God, and he deserves a bonus. Let's see...if the wall street boys think they did such a great job running their companies into the ground, destroying the American economy, and the global economy to boot, and think they deserve oh..121 million dollars for their work....let's take that taxpayer money and give 121 million to old Captain Sully. Or maybe the airline execs will give their next multi-million dollar bonus to these gentlemen. Let's call our congressfolks and see if we can spend our money THAT way! Ha! Since testifying before congress he has disappeared from American media!