Just another reason I'm glad to be getting off that thing. Imagine the surprise if that had happened in CRW or some other place that doesn't have 11,000 feet of runway...

Naturally, the accident report would read "Pilot error as attributed to the fact that the crew failed to rotate at the appropriate time and ran off the end of the runway at 150 knots. Contributing factors were the fact that the elevator was still at the gate."

 

I've never heard of that problem at TSA. When were these events?

 

You must be thinking of another airline because I haven't heard anything about it.

 

Several years back, I flew an ERJ for 2 legs with only 1/2 an elevator working. Obviously, we didn't know what the problem was. MX said a guide pin had broken and a cable came off the pulley. The indications were slow to rotate/flare and oscillations +/- 75-100' at 2-300 fpm. To this day I don't like mountain waves because they feel identical. The only comforting thing about it is you most likely would not auger in, a la Alaska, because the horizontal stab won't be fluttering. But good luck trying to land with trim only.

 

there was one event over the summer, I just flew with that CA

He said that it took both of them to rotate the airplane and bring it back and flare it enough so it did land nose wheel first.

mx looked at it and found that the torque tubes to the spring tabs broken and had punctured the skin of the evlevator.
also the hinges were all wallowed out and broken as well.

and then the service bulliten we just got last week said that another one of our birds had jammed elevator and aborted the takeoff.

now we have to right the airplane up fo mx if the airplane has been exposed to 50 kt wind gust. and dispatch will monitor the weather over night to make sure it does not get any large wind gust.

The crew procedure is to visually check the elevator on the preflight through its full range of motion to look for broken parts or tearing.

Reeves

 

I'd much rather fly the 145 than the 200.

 

I don't know...as much as I Loved the 145, the -200 has kind of grown on me. Tough call there. But I'm sure the heck glad to not have to fly w/broken tail feathers!! Pucker-factor for sure in every take-off!

 

Maybe they'll be a little more apt to get the electromechanical gustlocks installed much sooner. The ones without that are the only aircraft affected by the SB.

Makes sense. The electromecanical locks the elevator. The other one locks the yoke and you have fifty-something feet of cables getting tensioned and slacked as the elevator flops around.

 

True...and it's nice in the CRJ to have the hydraulic's in the tail to make any gustlock a mute point. But, the flip-side is that the CRJ just won't hand-fly the way a Jungle Jet does

 

I like the way the 135 and the XR hand fly, but the ER/EP/LR-145 models feel like crap, especially when slow.

As far as the electro lock goes, better for the airplane but still a pain in the butt. I made this mistake a few times as an FO and I see FO's make it now. Releasing it to do the control check, but not all the way, then when you advance the TL's up they are blocked. Just a pi$$ poor design.