Family defends co-pilot of doomed plane

The mother and husband of the co-pilot of the commuter plane that crashed in Buffalo say Rebecca Shaw was neither tired nor sick, as has been suggested during hearings into the accident that claimed the lives of 49 aboard the plane and one person on the ground.

“It’s completely untrue,” Troy Shaw, Shaw's husband, told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira Friday in New York.

“Rebecca was a professional pilot who took her job extremely seriously. She loved what she was doing, and she ... and the captain would never have stepped into that cockpit if they didn’t feel completely comfortable that they were going to make it to their destination,” Troy Shaw said.

Lynn Morris, Rebecca Shaw's mother, agreed, saying that the three-day National Transportation Safety Board hearings into the Feb. 12 crash did not give sufficient credit to her daughter’s level of skill and her qualifications.

Fatigue factor?
“I heard over and over again the issue of fatigue, the issue that she was sick,” Morris said. “And she wasn't fatigued, she wasn't sick.”

During the hearings, it was revealed that Rebecca Shaw, 24, and her husband had recently moved from Norfolk, Va., near the home base of her employer, Colgan Air Inc., to Seattle, where the couple lived with a relative. She was also working a part-time job to help supplement her $16,000 salary with the air carrier.

The day before the fatal flight, she flew on a FedEx redeye flight to Newark, with a stop in Memphis. Investigators speculated that she was fatigued.

There was also testimony that the co-pilot complained of congestion before the flight, which originated in Newark, and may have been too sick to fly.

Her husband told Vieira he talked to his wife shortly before the flight took off and did not complain of either fatigue or illness. “She sounded fantastic; sounded like any other time I'd talked to her when she was on the job,” he said.

A long commute
Shaw also countered suggestions that the couple had moved to Seattle to save money and that the cross-country commute would make her tired.

Moving to Seattle, he said, “is something we had been thinking about for several months. It was not a financial decision.” He said that Colgan was in the process of closing its Virginia base and she would have had to commute to Newark anyway.

“As strange as it sounds, it’s easier to commute from the West Coast to the East Coast,” he said, adding that because East Coast commuter flights are generally full, it’s more common to get kicked off flights, which would only add to the fatigue factor.

With the FedEx connection, he said, she had a confirmed seat and was able to sleep the entire flight. When she got to Newark on the day of the crash, she slept another five or six hours, Morris said.

AP Co-pilot Rebecca Shaw at her commencement at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash.

Investigators questioned whether Shaw and the pilot, Marvin Renslow, 47, were qualified to deal with the heavy icing conditions that contributed to the crash. They also apparently did not react correctly or quickly enough when the plane went into a stall.

Morris said her daughter was a qualified and dedicated pilot who was totally serious about her job.

“She was amazing. She worked hard. She set her goals she met her goals,” Morris told Vieira. “She was professional. She had a love of flying that I think was unusual. She was happiest when she was in the air ... She didn’t take chances with her flying. The minute she got in the plane she was ready to fly.

“She had the experience. She had the training. In my heart I know she did everything that was humanly possible to make things come out differently.”

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