Originally Posted by spitfire

I think Renslow's history of repeated checkride failures should have raised flags. But I don't understand how he could be considered qualified to fly the Saab and not the Q. The Q is maybe more "difficult" to fly, but the Saab's systems are arguably more complex. It doesn't make any sense to me how how he could be OK to fly one and not the other. They both need airspeed to fly ... maybe he would have done the same thing if he'd stayed on the Saab?

Also, why all the furor over Renslow's training background? This implies that only pilots with poor training records crash planes. But that isn't true.

Did the pilots responsible for Comair 5191 or Pinnacle 3701 (granted, they only killed themselves) have a string of check ride failures? Did anybody care to ask? What about the Air France 447 guys? Had they ever failed a check ride? Why is this only a factor in the Colgan 3407 crash?

The plane crashed because Renslow and his copilot, who had never failed a check ride, failed to monitor the most basic thing: their airspeed, then freaked out instead of recovering from the stall.

For the record, I was a Saab captain at Colgan at the time of the crash and the guy jump seating on 3407 was a buddy of mine.