cardiomd

Sorry if repost, but a very interesting read for all pilots.

Chaos in the cockpit: A new view of the deadliest plane crash in Akron history - Local - Ohio

Report here:

Accident ID CEN16MA036 Mode Aviation occurred on November 10, 2015 in Akron, OH United States Last Modified on April 29, 2016 12:04 Public Released on April 20, 2016 11:04 Total 50 document items

Fascinating that a "pilot" wouldn't know METAR MSL vs AGL (is this different in other countries?) and the difficulties exposed in simply doing routine flight despite very high hour counts.

Also underscores importance of not having pax pop in to the cockpit to say idiotic things near crucial times in flight.

iceman49

Early onset?

cardiomd

Huh? Did I post it before?

Adlerdriver

Not really an exact answer to your question - but flying in China we get METAR/TAF ceiling reports in feet but ATIS gives them in meters. Still all AGL, though. Internationally, I've never gotten any local weather related to a specific airport in anything other than AGL.

galaxy flyer

Reading the released documents indicates that knowing how ceiling is measured was the absolute LEAST of this crew's problems. How 'bout basic pilot skills, basic crew coordination and CRM? High time means zero especially looking at the co-pilot's history. Flunking training with those comments reminds of an old crusty DO who used to say, "what do you tell a guy who's flying airplanes and he should be selling shoes?"

GF

iceman49

Early onset, cog issues...like GF said

GravellyPointer

Skimming the CVR it sounds like the FO couldn't properly read the airspeed indication, as rudimentary as that may seem. CA says watch your speed, you're doing 140, it should be 170. FO says but it is 170.
I'm thinking speed bug was set to 170 but FO couldn't read the actual speed cause he wasn't actually taught it, was pretty dense, or both. Probably an EFIS, glass jet.

iceman49

What is really scary is who signed off on this pilot, what did the training consist of.

cardiomd

It is pretty incredible to read. I wish we could have actual audio to hear the tones of what people are saying - I am also surprised that nobody, on a previous flight, just said "hey, this guy should not be flying." This was a theme with Marvin Renslow also. Occasionally I find that the terrible few are incredibly nice people, otherwise they would have been fired.

Let's face it, when paired with somebody very competent, even a terrible professional pilot will have a flight that has a extremely high probability of completing successfully. In fact improved CRM will help these guys get through the system better as they can then rely on their competent colleagues whether they are higher or lower ranked. Pairing two lower performing individuals will eventually result in disaster.

I'd never expect such chaos in the professional world, but I'm not overly surprised. We deal with similar issues in my pro field.

cardiomd

Yes, it really doesn't make sense to report MSL, and the inclinometers / ceilometer would be directly read from AGL and would require barometric re-conversion to MSL which would be less useful and change rapidly. Only use would be to distant stations perhaps.

There is an ATC feed on one of the links I posted, the pilot transmitting sounds foreign, but not so bad that English proficiency was the issue.