TPROP4ever

I cant wait to see his wake up call. Anyone else remember that first missed approach in the sim and muscle memory thinking you were still in a piston and shoved those levers to the wall...... Oh crap tell me why I fried both engines again.... Gotta do it at least once to remember never do it again....still have a knot from the brick meeting forehead...LOL

SolidState

OK

I feel like a total piece of ****** now.... What can I say I read the transcript and I was shocked at the cavalier attitude in the cockpit and this really upset me. I was angry at the co/pilot and I guess I shouldn't have been because it's so tragic and they did pay the ultimate price. Humans make many mistakes and they usually originate from their emotions. Reading the transcript just got the best of me and I reacted out of line. My apologies to everyone on that flight for not respecting their memory and also to anyone here on this forum I upset. I also didn't realize it was a constant speed prop so those arguments I made are simply ill informed. I guess it all came down, as these horrible tragedies do, to a series of unavoidable events. The gear, ice on the leading edges and lack of monitoring airspeed led to the stall and in turn the tragic crash. My heart goes out to everyone directly and indirectly affected by this disastrous outcome. I hope this very heart felt post reflects my true nature and that others on this forum understand that I'm not a a**hole and I'm not sexist either.

PS I do wonder though after the massive throttle up heard on the flight recorder why the aircraft didn't increase speed and avoid the stall. Could the pilot have been yanking back on the yoke the whole time? and if so [what] happed to his training to push forward on the yoke during an event such as this?

tr disagree

Maybe the FAA will rethink the age 65 rule and put the retirement age back at 60

BoredwLife

That is the million dollar question and we will never know the answer. Was it fear, did he suspect a tail stall, was it just plain reaction in error? Those answers disappeared February 12, 2009, 2217 Eastern Standard Time (EST). RIP

Swedish Blender

I would say if they weren't stalled, the FO putting the flaps up uncommanded probably did it. Anybody know if that's standard recovery?

Sniper

Not according to Bombardier, Colgan, Transport Canada, or NASA (who all testified today).

A couple things I noticed in the hearing (biased, b/c I do recognize the pilots were likely @ fault, but I think Colgan is trying to avoid any responsibility in the matter):

• the accident crew set the power to 75% during their attempted stall recovery. The procedure calls for 90% as outlined by Bombardier, and followed by Colgan
• Bombardier Q400 Chief Test Pilot said (I'm paraphrasing) 'altitude has nothing to do with stall recovery'. It became VERY clear that Colgan's CA Prior (who has 25 hours TT on the Q400, yet is responsible for Q400 sim training) did not agree with this philosphy. His initial comments reflected the Colgan procedure at the time ('maintain altitude", otherwise known as ZERO altitude loss), but then said they now expect recovery in 100'-200'. One of Colgan's sim instrutors reported that 75% of the pilots he sees pull BACK when they encounter a pusher - just like the accident crew. Perhaps the standard to "maintain altitude" has something to do with this?
• Colgan DO says: if you get sick within 2 hours of your show, he thinks it is most appropriate to call fatigued, not sick
• overall impression is the DO and CA Prior were the most pilot unfriendly of the group by far (CA Prior did not compare favorable in Q400 knowledge when compared to the Chief Test Pilot for Bombardier, who testified with him

Colgan pilots - what's the deal with your sick call procedures? Do you really not call in sick when your sick, but rather fatigued?

577nitro

Just posted on Fox.



Schumer Wants Assurances From FAA Nominee Re-Flight 3407

As NTSB hearings opened in Washington into just what happened on Feb. 12 when Flight 3407 en route from Newark to Buffalo crashed on approach to the Buffalo International Airport killing all 50 people on board, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, met with a group of family members of the deceased.
Schumer, describing himself as “a skeptic of the FAA,” said he now plans to meet with President Obama’s nominee to the agency, Robert Babbitt, before a scheduled confirmation hearing next week. “I want to get assurances from him that we’ll get to the bottom of this,” Schumer told Fox.

An aide to the senator said the impromptu meeting lasted 40 minutes. Schumer described it as “just touching,” saying the families “want to make sure that the investigation gets to the real bottom of what happened. They want to make sure corrections are made.”
Reports Tuesday out of the NTSB hearing indicated that the pilot, Capt. Marvin Renslow, might have prevented the crash, the worst in the U.S. in more than seven years.

The Schumer aide said the following family members participated in Tuesday’s meeting, “Kevin Kuwik (boyfriend of Lorin Maurer a Princeton employee); Susan Bourque and Karen Eckert (Beverly Eckert’s sisters); Dana Hartman and Cindy King (daughter and friend of Retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant John Fior, who was buried at Arlington); Robin, Darren, and Nikki Tolsma (children and wife to Darren Tolsma, a Northrup Grumman employee); and Justine Krasuski (wife to Jerome Krasuski, also Northrup Grumman employee).”

“Three months after the loss of loved ones, instead of cursing the darkness, they’re trying to create change,” Schumer said, adding, “There are a lot of different theories as to what happened. We have to turn over every stone.”


This is going to just get really ugly. Hang tough a storm is brewing.

MrBigAir

To reference calling in sick: I don't know of any regional airline where calling in sick isn't punished in one way or another, especially within two hours of show. Management will push us right to the limit-- 16hr days, 6 days a week, loss of off days, severe consequences and or interrogation from the DO for calling in sick and especially, for calling in fatigued. And then when something happens in the airplane, the pilots will be blamed for not calling in sick/fatigued/whatever. The reality on the ground is very different from what's on paper.

I don't work for Colgan, this is just my experience from my regional.

iPilot

Who knows, maybe this will finally uncover the practices of the regional airline world and push change for the better? I have a feeling that rule makers will find that just adding more checklists or training procedures won't fix the cause this time.

DMEarc

I would venture to say his training prepared himself for this. The blatant disregard for situational awareness is the obvious cause of the accident. Let's look at the facts.

-Capt. Renslow was had just come off 3 consecutive stand-up overnights.
-He could not afford a crashpad and therefore slept in loud an noisy crewroom.
-First Officer Shaw had commuted in on red-eye FedEx flight from SEA via Memphis
-Shaw had been awake since her 0600 arrival in EWR

Here are two people, obviously tired flying a late night flight, after a 1 1/2 hour taxi. On the approach to Buffalo that night, they were talking. Breaching Sterile Cockpit? Yes! But you all do it and you know you do.

So now we have these two, forgetting to put the power up, talking to eachother about absolutely pointless topics, he calls for the gear and flaps and the airplane goes crazy. For all they know the airplane was flying normally. Stick shaker, AP disconnect and he pulled up and applied power. She took it upon herself to retract the flaps to ZERO. (Procedure prob calls for Power, MAINTAIN ALTITUDE, wait for POSITIVE RATE and GEAR....THEN FLAPS to 5? ETC ETC ETC) Now he has aggravated the stall to the point of no returns (At this point they had already lost too much ALT).

Those are all facts. It caught them by surprise.

She probably shouldn't have done that. Not standard.

This was an accident. It was most likely human nature to pull back and add power after being surprised with the airplane going out of control like that.