captive apple

Stop. You are wrong.

captive apple

The point is that he was hired with 700 hours and no experience during the boom years. Much like they are today.

dera

The shaker went off because they had the increased ref speeds selected. They were 5-6 degrees AOA (20ish knots) from an actual stall when it went off. They had no ice on the wings. So they nowhere near an actual stall. Read the report man, it's discussed in a lot of detail in there.

dera

Not sure where, please enlighten me.

a) PRIA is from 1996
b) the captain only disclosed his initial instrument checkride failure in his application to Colgan, and "forgot" to mention his commercial checkride bust, and all the unsat events during his time at Gulfstream.
c) It's pretty obvious you can't do what he did any more, especially when airlines care about what your history looks like in case of an accident.

rickair7777

They DID NOT have a tail stall.

She WAS NOT attempting to apply the recovery technique for a tail stall. There was no discussion or mention of that on the CVR. She was startled, didn't know what yo do so she did the wrong thing. Not surprising given her fatigue state.

dera

They had incorrectly selected increased Vref speeds. Stick shaker activated way too early (20+ knots too early). Captain pulls on the yoke like crazy for reasons we'll never understand. FO puts the flaps up, perhaps to return to previous configuration (shaker goes off almost immediately after selecting flaps 10), but doesn't really discuss that with the captain. Stick pusher activates, captain pulls against it with huge force (160lbs on the last pull). Plane crashes.

Pretty horrible event. But nothing to do with "tail stall". I'm not sure what kind of college that guy went to...

stabapch

The one thing I can disagree with is that in order to appease the affected families, the lawmakers publicly announced this as a legislation that aims to increase the required time to obtain an ATP. The families were told this was caused solely due to lack of pilot experience.

What does this sound like to the general non-pilot public? That the airlines are putting passengers lives in the hands of “unqualified” people. Maybe it would have been more accurate to expose the realities of life as a regional pilot to the public?

Most passengers still have no clue that most of their domestic flying isn’t done on AA, DL or UA. What if they also found out at the time that the guy upfront was making just enough money to not qualify for food stamps? If this was public, would we see a decrease of RP’s? Possibly leading to a change in industry as well?

DarkSideMoon

I read the report, it’s just been at least six years. Good point, my bad. My shaker is AOA derived and I forgot that that’s not how the -8 works.

Nevjets

It’s disingenuous to say that 1500 hours is arbitrary and not make the same argument for ALL flight time requirements. If you believe that they should get rid of the 1500 hour rule, then you should also argue to get rid of the 40 hour rule and the 250 hour rule and every single hour requirements to get any certificate of rating (cross country, solo, instrument, etc.)

It’s not a 1500 hour rule. It’s an ATP rule. You can now get an ATP at 750/1000/1250 hours as well.

Did those colgan pilots benefit from and learn from making their own mistakes (1500 hours worth of mistakes) BEFORE being hired at an airline? Before this law I knew pilots who upgraded and were PIC for the first time since getting their commercial pilot certificate at 250 hours. They were making their real first PIC decisions (not under the direct supervision of a CFI) while having paying passengers on board! At least now, they need an ATP and 1000 hours SIC minimum. There is A TON of learning in that amount of time. Just learning what not to do is better than nothing.

The ATP rule increased pay. Would the pilots of that colgan flight be as fatigued or sick if they had a livable wage?

The law also implemented 117, it mandated upset recovery training, mandated more training towards the ATP, mandated an establishment of a faa records database with checkride pass/fail history, it mandated SMS, foqa, and ASAP, it mandated a mentor, professional development, and leadership (still pending implementation), and I’m probably missing a couple things.

I can’t think of one thing in that law that wasn’t positive for pilots or that didn’t improve safety.

dera

I think it is safe to say, even though this sounds pretty brutal, but Colgan 3407 was the best thing that ever happened to the regional airline industry.