The FAA is asking all U.S. airlines to take new measures to check out prospective hires and to provide better training. The first round of recommendations emerged after a meeting of government officials, airlines and union representatives last week, the FAA said in a news release. While the FAA wants all airlines to sign on to the changes, for now they’ll be voluntary. The changes would include doing more thorough background checks of new hires to determine not just their performance at other airlines, but any checkride failures or other training problems. And airlines will start looking for ways to bolster their training programs, though it’s too soon to say what specific changes might be made. The meeting last week was spurred in part by the crash of a Colgan Air Bombardier Q400 last winter that killed 50 people in Buffalo, N.Y. The pilots of that plane were fatigued and may not have had enough training in it, an NTSB hearing revealed. The captain had previously failed a checkride that Colgan did not know about, either. In addition to the newly announced voluntary efforts, the FAA has said it will revise mandatory flight time and duty time limits for flight crews.

The two pilots flying Continental Connection flight 3407 when it crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., in February may have slept in the crew lounge at Newark before the flight and one commuted overnight from Seattle the night before. Those and other details into the flight emerged during three days of National Transportation Safety Board hearings last week, shining a bright light on the grueling schedules pilots for regional airlines must maintain, the New York Times reported. Colgan Air, which operated the Continental Connection flight, said at the hearings that Capt. Marvin Renslow made about $55,000 per year and that First Officer Rebecca Shaw earned $25,000 annually. But the NTSB calculated, based on the number of hours in her logbook, that Shaw was actually earning just $16,000 per year, since pay is based on the number of hours in the air. The hearing also focused on whether Shaw may have been sick and whether Renslow had ever received training on how the Bombardier Q400’s stick shaker and stick pusher worked – both devices made to prevent a stall. What the cockpit voice recorder transcripts made clear was that both pilots violated sterile cockpit rules during the approach and neither appeared to notice that the plane was loosing airspeed in the seconds before it stalled. The CVR also captured a conversation between the two pilots in which Shaw said she had never flown in icing conditions and was worried about doing so; the plane crashed in an area of light to moderate icing.

The NTSB is downplaying the role icing played in the Feb. 12 crash of a turboprop that killed 50 people as it approached Buffalo, N.Y. The board’s investigation so far has found that the plane would have encountered light or moderate icing, but that would have had a “minimal impact on the stall speed of the airplane.” And the NTSB’s latest update confirms earlier reports that one of the pilots pulled back sharply on the control column when the stick-shaker engaged. The NTSB will hold a hearing in May to review many aspects of the accident. Besides icing and weather, the board is reviewing the flight crew’s actions, training, recent flights and fatigue, as well as looking more broadly at Colgan Air’s training programs and other procedures for pilots.