In recent remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) ripped a proposal that’s being pushed by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and others that could result in less training for certain pilots before they, well, take off.
The ostensible idea is to provide a leg up to airline companies that have suffered from staffing difficulties. Duckworth, who was involved in a plane disaster during her military service that she narrowly survived, framed the issue as one of basic safety. She also explained that she’d yet to even see remotely convincing specifics on how lowering the hours of training needed would directly translate to an increase in the workforce’s size.
“Believe me. I have asked for the specifics,” Duckworth told her Senate colleagues. “If we reduce the minimum flight hours from 1,500 to 1,000, how many more pilots would be available in the following calendar year? What about 800 hours? What if we drop it to 500 or to 250? How many more pilots would you have then? Yet, today, I have received no precise estimate, let alone any credible projections. At this point, I question whether the special interests pushing to weaken the 1,500-hour rule even have a methodology or model to measure the relationship between certain certification standards and the availability of pilots.”
She also noted how the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) itself has presented similar arguments. “Now is not the time to put corporate profits ahead of the lives of our constituents who may want to board a commercial flight in the future,” Duckworth continued in the chamber. “A vote to reduce the 1,500-hour rule for pilot training will be blood on your hands when the inevitable accident occurs as a result of an inadequately trained flight crew. I urge my colleagues to uphold the 1,500-hour rule.”
Is Sinema, who will be on the ballot next year if she runs for another term, just trying to make people not like her? Her support with some Republicans for lessening the hours needed in training before certain aviating adds to a list that already includes, among other moves, opposition to raising the minimum wage and insistence on preserving special tax conditions to protect income in private equity investing… which isn’t really going to be a concern of many, many of her constituents! Her opposition to changing the Senate’s filibuster rules has also helped ensure a continued gap in available federal protections for abortion and casting ballots. That’s her legacy.
