At a time a shortage of pilots has prompted regional airlines to contemplate relaxing their experience minimums to attract new first officers, the proposed rule issued recently by the FAA to require an Air Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate for first officers—along with its accompanying 1,500-hour flight-time minimum—must keep human resource managers awake at night. It also puts alphabet organizations such as the Regional Airline Association in a serious bind.
To the general public, the RAA cannot show anything other than an unassailable commitment to safety, regardless of the cost consequences to its membership. To its airline members, its responsibility lies not only with projecting a positive public image but also with cost containment, which, in effect, translates into lobbying for less regulation, not more. Meanwhile, the members of the association serve another master—their major airline partners—whose interests sometimes conflict with those of the smaller airlines on which they depend for passenger feed or low-cost supplementary service.
Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with New Jersey Monthly magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for Aviation International News in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.
