waflyboy

Church....

Nantonaku

Don't under estimate experience, one inexperienced pilot can kill hundreds of people:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

What do you think the families of those onboard Colgan 3407 will say if you ask them if experience matters?

Dokk

Didn't mean to start a ruckus. If offered the left seat in indoc, I personally would want a month or two on the line to at least get accustomed to the new airplane. Just curious how realistic that upgrade was.

I will say that 135 PIC gets you a lot of the decision making that doesn't always come with 1000 hours in the right seat. Plus we may not go into the flight levels, but we shoot approaches just as fast if not faster than the RJs, uncoupled, to 1800RVR.

Rama04

How fast are you shooting an approach in the 135 world? Max landing weight Vref for the CRJ-200 was around 142 before adding any wind or gust factor etc speed bump.
And before anybody has a heart attack, my upgrade class of 8 had 1 military, 1 previous 135 and 6 previous 121 pilots. So, for the most part, there's plenty of experience upgrading at Compass.

Maingear

I wasn't trying to insult your flying experience, I was just saying that a EMB-175 is a lot different than a 402. There's a lot more going on besides the actual flying when you have 76 pax and a jet that's a lot more limited with airports than a smaller piston plane. I think flying a couple months on the line is a great idea, but honestly, how many people would actually do that before attempting upgrade?

Bzzt

Neither of the Colgan pilots were inexperienced or low time.

404yxl

Here we go again. More infinite wisdom from Bzzt.

First of all the Colgan crash wouldn't have happened with the ATP minimums, sincen the Captain was hired at Colgan with 600 hours and wouldn't have been able to upgrade. Add to that his training failures, he probably was glossed over in upgrade.

Let's also look at you comment on them being experienced. They weren't. Listen to their own words explaining their inexperience with icing.

It never ceases to amaze me people still think ATP minimums and all the other changes since that crash wouldn't have changed the outcome.

Rama04

Captain Marvin Renslow, age 47, had flown 3,379 hours, 261 of them on the Q400 (including 109 as a captain). He previously flew for Gulfstream International Airlines prior to joining Colgan. First Officer Rebecca Lynne Shaw, age 24, of Maple Valley, Washington, had flown 2,200 hours, 772 of them on the Q400.
Ten slow had 152 hours in the Q as FO before upgrading. Renslow was a Captain in 2007 - so just have been close to the 2,500 hour upgrade himself. Shaw got hired at Colgan with 1428 hours.
I guess it depends on your definition of inexperience and low-time.

404yxl

FRONTLINE > Business / Economy / Financial > Flying Cheap >
Internal Emails Reveal Doubts About Flight 3407 Pilot


A month later, Renslow — who was hired by Colgan in 2005 with only 618 hours of flight time under his belt — was given the nod to fly Q400s.


Source: Buffalo News

Colgan Air has revised its pilot hiring standards in a way that would have disqualified someone as inexperienced as the pilot of the doomed Flight 3407, the company said today as hearings into the Feb. 12 crash turned to the company's hiring and employment practices.

In addition, testimony revealed that the copilot of Flight 3407 — which crashed into a home in Clarence, killing 50 — had a gross annual salary of about $16,254 a year.

The second day of National Transportation Safety Board hearings in the crash moved the focus away from the pilot, Capt. Marvin Renslow, and toward Colgan, the Continental Airlines subcontractor that operated Flight 3407.

Under questioning from investigators, Mary Finnegan, Colgan's vice president for administration, acknowledged that when Renslow was hired, the minimum number of flight hours to be considered for hiring was 600 hours.

Since the Clarence crash, Colgan has boosted its minimum flying requirement for new pilots to 1,000 hours, Finnegan acknowledged.

Dokk

Our normal approach speed is 120, however we push it up to 170 until the FAF when we're operating in large airports like BOS to keep up with everyone else. Inside the FAF we're 120-140 depending on need.

I certainly agree and didn't take it as such, just providing some alternative perspective for anyone concerned about the 135 guys. I know of at least 1 guy who's just finishing indoc that turned down the upgrade until he could get some experience in the airplane first. I'd probably do the same to make sure I'm comfortable.