Originally Posted by
sailingfun
That’s a big part of the problem. With the exception of some military pilots most airline pilots entire stall experience is in light aircraft with straight wings. There stall characteristics are vastly different then a awept wing high performance jet. Most simulators have no fidelity in reproducing stalls and even if they could the violence that often accompanies a stall/departure from controlled flight in high performance aircraft will always be missing. Essentially we have no real training for the post departure regime.
The Colgan event was not a swept wing aircraft, nor particularly high performance, nor one of unconventional stall characteristics, nor did it lack for stall warning, nor cockpit data. All were present, all were active, all conventional.
The emphasis on training for airlines is stall avoidance. Renslow wasn't in a stalled state until he took the aircraft there, held it there, failed to increase power beyond partial, and continued to increase AoA throughout the evolution. This wasn't an accelerated stall, and it wasn't a tip stall or deep stall state in a swept wing aircraft, nor a stalled state in which aerodynamic control was limited, blanked-out, or reversed. It was entirely avoidable, and entirely recoverable.
Depending on circumstance, in a swept wing aircraft, especially in the arrival and approach phse, it's possible to force the aircraft into a state from which recovery is not possible in a swept wing aircraft, given the altitude loss that will be involved in recovery, in some cases. This was not the case with the Colgan flight.