WASHINGTON — The co-pilot in an airline crash that killed 50 people in upstate New York was paid a salary so low that she lived with her parents near Seattle and commuted across the country to her job, a combination of long travel and little pay that a safety official called a “recipe for an accident.”
The second day of a three-day National Transportation Safety Board hearing Wednesday focused on whether Captain Marvin Renslow and co-pilot Rebecca Shaw were fatigued on the wintry night of Feb. 12 when they apparently made a series of critical errors as Continental Connection Flight 3407 approached Buffalo Niagara International Airport. All 49 people aboard and one on the ground were killed in the worst U.S. air crash in seven years.
Shaw, 24, had worked for Colgan Air of Manassas, Va., which operated the flight for Continental, for 13 months, flying 774 hours in her first year. Colgan pays its beginning first officers $21 an hour, which means she would have earned $16,254 that year, although she could have earned more if she worked more hours, said Roger Cox, an NTSB aviation-safety expert.
In questioning Colgan officials, Cox suggested that Shaw was commuting from her home near Seattle because she couldn’t afford to live in the New York area on her salary. She had a second job in a coffee shop when first hired.
Colgan spokesman Joe Williams declined to disclose Shaw’s salary but said the airline’s starting first officers typically earn around $24,000. Late Wednesday, he said Shaw’s salary was $23,900.
The night before the accident, Shaw flew overnight as a passenger from Seattle, changing planes in Memphis, Tenn., to report to work at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. She also complained about congestion and may have had a cold.
Renslow, 47, commuted to Newark from his home near Tampa, Fla. It is unclear where Renslow, who was in the middle of a two-day assignment, slept the night before the trip, but he logged in to a computer from Colgan’s crew room in Newark at 3 a.m. on the day of the flight, according to NTSB documents.
