Dear Insurance Company

Start writing those large liability checks today.

The captain of a commuter plane that crashed Feb. 12 near Buffalo, N.Y., had flunked numerous flight tests during his career and was never adequately taught how to respond to the emergency that led to the airplane's fatal descent, according to people close to the investigation.

All 49 people aboard were killed, as well as one person in a house below, when the plane crashed just a few miles short of the Buffalo airport en route from Newark, N.J.

Maintaining a strict training regimen and safety requirements is more than just fulfilling a moral duty you have to your passengers, it is good business. Too many airlines don't do this to save money, yet they manage to do this while simultaneously treating their customers like shit. It's really quite an amazing combination.

The scary thing is:

1. This is a commuter airline, because of my job in the actual world I've had occasion to discover what these pilots make -- and I was shocked to find out how little it was.

2. With this industry going down the shitter right now (as it has for years) you can imagine they are not exactly anxious to spend more money on safety and training if they think they can get away with less of it.


This isn't intended to scare you off of flying, after all, driving means you have to put up with your fellow citizens behind the wheel and that's even less safe. But it could be a hell of a lot safer -- not to mention much, much better run. I don't hate the flying part, but what used to be exiting and cool -- flying in an airplane -- has become one of the worst and most dehumanizing experiences in the world that you actually have to pay for.

It sucks.