[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 1739]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        REMEMBERING FLIGHT 3407

  (Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak today about Flight 3407 
that crashed in Buffalo, New York, 7 years ago tomorrow.
  This plane crashed inside of the runway on an icy February night. We 
learned that the pilot and the copilot had never been trained at all on 
flying into an icy situation. The young woman who was the copilot had 
flown in the night before from Seattle. She was paid so little--around 
$13,000 a year--that she could not afford a motel room to sleep, so she 
slept on the floor somewhere. On the black box, you could hear them 
yawning before the crash.
  In that plane crash were two of the best musicians in the United 
States, a woman who knew more about Rwanda and its problems than 
anybody else, and one of the most extraordinary anthropologists in the 
world. They died because these pilots had no idea of how to fly in 
those conditions.
  Colgan Air, their owner, was trying to take some responsibility.
  We have worked with the families of the people who died on that 
plane. They have selflessly come down here for 7 years, and we have 
finally gotten some regulation through the FAA of how much training 
they had to have, that at least the pilot or the copilot had to have 
some hours of flying time behind them that would be of some use.
  Now, we are facing an FAA bill here today, where they are trying to 
undo those safety regulations. It absolutely applies to every last one 
of us in the United States.
  For goodness sake, I implore my colleagues not to let it happen, that 
those regulations would be weakened and, once more, we would be flying 
people who are living on subsistence wages, unable to really cope with 
the weather or the elements.
  We deserve better than that in this century.

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