Mr. President, the legislation on the floor of the Senate at this point includes legislation that I have worked on with my colleagues for about 3 years. It is a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Travel Promotion Act. I wish to…

The thing that troubles me is, we now have done an unbelievable inspection of what happened in that cockpit of one airplane taking one flight, and it appears to me to have about six or eight very serious problems.

But, I'm talking--did this pilot have adequate training on--you know, look, in the first 10 hours of instruction, when you want to get a pilot's license, you learn what a stall is and how to recover from it.

the issue is, there's already a rule. I mean, the rule would have told both of those pilots, 'You can't show up at LaGuardia and spend your time in the crew room. You've got to get rest somewhere.'

Shouldn't we assume that's a problem?

So, this issue was contracted out by Colgan to a contractor, and Colgan did not oversee the contractor properly, you're saying?

And that's the 250 hours.

I think that relates more to a workday period.

But let me ask you whether you think that this is a reasonable concern.

It has become clear to me that Congress and the industry needs to take major steps to ensure that there is indeed one level of safety throughout the entire commercial aviation industry.

But, let me put up--these are the Colgan air pilots commuting to the Newark base.

So, then the question is--then the question is, not just a new rule, although a new rule is probably reasonable, but, How do we enforce rules?

Has that been remedied?

So, a minimum of 1500 hours. All right.

I understand that, but I'm talking about experience in the air. There's no--I've been in the simulator--there's no ice in the simulator.

I was stunned that...

And it seems to me to be pretty persuasive evidence that you've got to make things happen.

Pilot error. That would suggest that something happened in a moment in that cockpit that caused that accident.