Well spoken ... if this turns out to be his fault (he was the PF), he would be the first one to speak up and say "I messed up, I was in charge and I made a mistake." I can only hope that the final report provides some light on the situation and diffuse some of the dark clouds hovering.

 

Some reports in USA today show an interest in unnecessary communication below 10,000

 

Feds: Pilot triggered steep climb in Buffalo air crash - USATODAY.com

Quote:
“As the plane prepared to land, a warning device known as a "stick shaker" activated, the NTSB said. The stick shaker alerts pilots that they are flying too slowly by vibrating the control column. If a plane gets too slow, it can "stall" — not an engine stall, but an aerodynamic stall where air flowing over the wings can no longer keep the plane aloft.

Pilots are trained to respond to the stick shaker by immediately lowering a plane's nose and increasing power. But the pilots on the Colgan Air flight instead pulled the nose up aggressively. A control column movement to lift the nose was captured by the plane's crash-proof data recorder, the NTSB said.”

I'm waiting for the final report but I can see this happening. They’re flying along with the AP on when the airplane got to slow setting the shaker off, once the shaker goes off the AP disconnects and the PF’s knee jerk reaction is to quickly grad the yoke and pull back causing the full stall. I’ve seen many pilots do this exact thing in the sim and on average it takes them thousands of feet in altitude to recover. Once you start the large pitch oscillations they can get pretty hard to control.

One more note, the article mentioned how we are trained to lower the nose during a stall and that the pilot pulled back “aggressively” instead of lowering the nose. Well when the PF pulled back they hadn’t stalled yet seeing that the shaker is not the stall, just the onset, and we are taught to hold pitch (no increase and very little relaxation if any at all) and power through the shaker.

RIP 3407

 

That's what I thought when I was reading that article. Do your best to hold current pitch with the shaker and use the power to get you out of the stall. Another A+ for the idiots that write these news articles.

 

give the PF the benefit of doubt:

--they were in icing conditions
--had just configured flaps and gear
--the yoke suddenly moved forward very quickly

what if he interpreted the pusher as a tailplane stall...

yes there were other factors, there always are...

Cheers
George

 

Instead of renewing the speculation, just search for the thread from earlier. All of the "theories" were discussed thoroughly.

The only thing I found intriguing in the NTSB statement was that they were looking at other things than icing and the statement seemed to imply that those other things were significant.

"go well beyond the widely discussed matter of airframe icing" is the exact quote.

 

The CVR will be released at the public hearings. However, the fact that the hearings will be in May, only three months after the accident typically means there is not a lot left to be investigated. Often times the hearings take at least 8-12 months to accomplish.

 

deleted!!!!

 

This will be very significant.

 

Actually, I thought the article pretty good for a change.

In the Air Force (at least, T-38 Pilot training, and the fighter that I flew), we do lower the nose (at first) as well as add power. Why? Because you end up losing less altitude by getting out of the heavy-buffet sooner. It was the same when I flew with the Navy in the T-34C.

Been a long time since I have flown GA, but I think I was taught that way in C-150s, too.

I was shocked when I got to airline flying and they wanted me to maintain altitude and solve the problem with power. You can't do that in most fighters, let alone a relatively underpowered jet airliner.

It works in the airliner sim if you recover at stall-shaker indications...because you aren't really in a stall yet. But I wonder what would happen if you fully-stalled the airplane (like we do in the military). I'd bet you couldn't accelerate-out with power alone. And I think that happened to 3407 due to ice:

Let's assume the airplane fully-stalled, or tail-stalled. They've been taught, over and over: "Maintain your altitude in a stall recovery!!" (Or you'll bust your checkride). Yet the airplane was descending, with full power. Did they pull-up to hold altitude, only to aggravate the stall to a point that random yaw made it depart?

And that is a fault of the approved training practices that have made this institutional across all airline training departments. This might be a time to re-think this, just like when airlines, military, and the FAA became aware of microburst phenomena and mechanics/science in the 1970s, and new training practices---and rules---were put into place.