What’s the story with the Piedmont plane doing a high speed taxi test then “accidentally” taking off? Supposedly with like 500 lbs of fuel.

 

Direct Entry Captain… probably fatigued during a long airport reserve shift (8hrs at PDT)… fortunately nobody died but there needs to be a lot of scrutiny and reevaluation of the DEC training program and hiring practices as well as scheduling practices at Piedmont.

 

Did the FO not notice anything? Glad everyone made it out safe though.

 

The Maintenance taxi run ended up being the FOs first flight off of OE…Mx requested a 100KIAS taxi speed. Light airplane- no pax and little gas in the takeoff configuration…Not much time/effort for the plane to reach fly away speed from a 100KIAS target in that scenario. What’s the best way to recover from an accidental rotation? It seems DEC decided it was safer to take flying than to try to land on the runway they just rotated from without being in the landing configuration and not having landing distance calculated.

Low experience DEC got setup for failure for sure… Brand new FO off OE (green on green scheduling?), MX request for 100KIAS taxi, that the company doesn’t have a set procedure for (for a shimmy that usually happens at 40-70KIAS on landing rollout), Long airport standby sit for reserve… Luckily they had enough gas for one lap in the pattern otherwise they’d be dead and probably would have taken out some folks in Essington with them.

 

Any more info about this?

 

First time hearing about this, and everything about it sounds retarded. Definitely agree with Otterbox that the whole DEC selection and training needs to be reimagined. Too many instances of incompetence in training, when the whole premise is these guys are bringing experience. The only way this isn’t a green-on-green situation is if the DEC was previously typed in the 145, which makes this error even more egregious. FO was literally along for the ride. Hopefully this cues management in to the idea that throwing anyone with a pulse in the left seat has drawbacks.

 

The DEC program was around pre Covid and only one of the DECs successfully completed training without remediation. I’ve flown with of one who completed post Covid with no issues. Every once in a while a good one comes along, but generally they’re terrible. But Piedmont is desperate for captains. So much so that scheduling and the CPs office kept the DEC on duty for the rest of his airport standby stint after committing a pilot deviation that almost killed himself and his FO.

 

They kept him on duty after that?!? JFC. Yeah, not to crap on the whole lot of guys but you really have to ask why someone who has upgraded, or is qualified to didn’t do that at their previous employer, and isn’t comfortable there. TransStates and ExpressJet guys, I get it. But, generally we’re getting problem children. This should be filtered out in the interview process, but as far as I know instructors/ LCA aren’t on the interview panel selecting pilots. Instead, the work’s left up to them during training. For instance, who thinks it’s a great idea to pay and train a guy thats over 64? What’s the ROI there? DECS are needed for fast growth, but inevitably water down the institutional knowledge and experience base of our Captain group.

 

Especially doesn’t help that they’ve sent sim instructors back to the line and hired non-seniority list instructors who retired from AA and don’t understand the unique training circumstances the regional level faces.

 

It’s okay, they’re friends with Finley. That’s the only qualification they need. Never mind they’re pushing through terrible students who are safety risks on the line…