Yea, he was wearing a Utah sweatshirt. He was over on FOXNews later claiming it was definitely engine failure, he could tell by the sound!

 

I have been flying a large transport aircraft for a few years. I feel comfortable in the airplane however I am always opened to suggestions, techniques, and experience when I fly with some of the pilots I fly with. Trust me, I have learned a lot more on the line with these guys then I could ever learn in a class room or sim. Also, two month after training on a new aircraft and flying into the weather condition last night could have posed additional threats. I bring this up because the Q400 is a relative new equipment at colgan. Is there training on tail stall recovery in the school house? Also, are there was report by a Cactus of icing for about 20 minutes or so. A Delta only reported icing from about 7000 to 3500' however if you look at the flight tracking, Cactus was closer to the Colgan path then Delta. Last but not least, the captain had just completed training on the Q400 in early December. He was new to the seat but I wonder what equipment he had come from? The Colgan report stated the fo was hired in jan 2008, however they have her as flying 2200+ hours at the company. Like all accidents, there has to be a chain of events. I think it is valid to discuss these without offending our fallen peers. It is only healthy and helps the others that have to return to fly these equipments while we wait to find out an official report from the NTSB.

 

Ok so do you know if the Captain with thousands of hours was the one flying this or the FO with thousands of hours? If it does turn out to be the icing inducing a stall at such a low altitude not much could be done to prevent this eh? even if you are a 10k hour super pilot .......Time to jump off that high horse. Condolences to everyone affected by this tragedy. Sad day......

 

Guys, if it was a tail stall that was caused by the input of the flaps, they couldn't recover at that altitude no matter who was at the controls. They had one happen to the saab and it took the crew several thousand fleet to recover. The saab A model had a huge design flaw so they blocked out the flaps 35 slot in response. Although, it is just my opinion, unless one of the pilots intentionally dove the plane into the ground, I don't see any way they could be at fault for this accident. They deserve respect and not airbus320 implying that they were inexperienced.

 

Everybody need to stop the speculations.. No one knows what happen! It could have been anything and could have happen to anyone. It always boggles my mind on how many pro accident investigators we have on these site and in the media when something tragic happens. Just show some respect for those lives that were lost... 49 brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, sons, daughters, cousins, grandmothers, grandfathers. At the end of the day, that could have been anyone of us. Wait until the CVR's and FDR info come out before jumping to conclusion.

 

My heart goes out to the families and friends of the crew and passengers.

I just spend two days flying in the midwest and east coast battling the most extreme windshear I have seen in my 10 years of professional flying. On my way home late last night I thought to myself, "two days of awful weather and no accidents, we are lucky." Sadly I didn't know of the accident that had happened about an hour before. I am sick.

Godspeed to the excellent pilots of Colgan 3407.

 

Check out WROC's coverage of the commuter plane that crashed in Clarence, NY. Follow the link. http://rochesterhomepage.net

 

As a member of the Colgan Air family and one that knew the Captain very well I would like to respectfully ask that all speculations as to what happened and debates on experience be put to rest.

Let us just mourn the loss of our friends and family and be here for each other.

Thank you.

 

First of all this thread is about to be closed because it has turned into our typical regional thread but we will give it another chance. If it does not clean up I will close it and re-open a Colgan 3407 thread where we can start over.

And second..
Rebecca came on with Colgan in the early stages somewhere around January or so and made it to the line in Feb or March of last year. Those hours were her total time and not time with Colgan. We discussed most of this together over beers at reccurrent ground last month in HEF together.

She was recently married and her and her husband were moving to the Seattle area to buy a house. They had already moved earlier this month shortly after training.

 

I logged on today to see what people had to say, and I'm astounded. We have a CFI speculating on skill level loss due to flying part 121 with an autopilot. We have someone who is at least apearring to possibly fly an A320 who thinks he is immune to any misfortunes due to his immense experience and size of his airplane. And someone mentioning payscales?! This is unbelievable. People log on to these places to read this stuff. The media reads this stuff. Friends of those pilots are on here. None of us are invincible or perfect. Until the NTSB proclaims the cause, let's just take a moment and remember the lives lost.