Continental Crash Shows Safety May Have Price!

Selling paint at Home Depot can be more lucrative than flying a commercial airplane. That startling fact emerged last week after three days of hearings by the National Transportation Safety Board into the crash of Continental Express Flight 3407 on Feb. 12 near Buffalo, which killed 50 people.
Among the headlines: The flight's 24-year-old first officer, Rebecca Shaw, earned less than $17,000 in 2008, her first year on the job with Colgan Airlines, the Manassas, Va.-based carrier that flies regionally for Continental, US Airways, and United. (The company later said the pay figure was reported incorrectly during the hearings, and that Shaw actually made $23,900.) Her pay wasn't the only part of the crash narrative that raised warning flags for some. Testimony also described the captain's prior failings on inspection flights and Shaw's overnight "red-eye" commute to work.
Yet it was Shaw's situation that seemed the most gripping, raising these questions: With so many costs squeezed out of airlines in recent years, just how low can a cockpit salary go? And is the airline industry reaching the limits of an economic model that seems to have more in common with Wal-Mart than with a highly trained profession where safety must come before all else?