If the regionals were smart, they'd give a fair but tough pc check to all captains that were hired in the last boom.

Rank the results, fire the dipsticks and hire straight to captain those "5000 hour with 5 type ratings guys/gals sitting at home."

 

fire the dipsticks ok. Street captains, bypassing my seniority NO

 

Unless I missed something, the FAA sets the standards on who gets to fly. The tests are objective, and everyone must go through the same hoops.

The "argument" that current work conditions are discouraging more generally desirable candidates may have merit, but this tragic incident has little or nothing to bolster it. In the eyes of the FAA, these two pilots (whatever their other faults) were fully qualified and had to go through some very specific and demanding training hurdles.

If this incident does bolster this "argument" in a peripheral fashion, the only NTSB recommendation I could see coming out of it would be for the FAA to make the barriers to entry and retention even more stringent (health, age, training qualification, tighter parameters and "wildcard" scenarios on checkrides, etc.).

I suspect pilot labor groups would strenuously object to harder checkrides that offer more realistic evaluations of pilot skill and judgment. The "canned" checkride is very much the career aviator's friend, particularly as the years go by.

Alternately, the FAA could institute a "2 strikes and you're out" policy. Two failed training events in the course of a career and that's the end of your flying (because a pattern has been established). This is a regulatory way to "weed-out" weak but technically proficient pilots and has the virtue of being objective and "fair". But man oh man . . . talk about checkride-itis!

(IMHO.)

 

Seniority used to work great back in the day when 90% of pilots came form the military and/or had a lot of flight time before their first job... in this era of 250TT new hires, and upgrades at 1501TT... might be time to "re-thing" how seniority works.

 

You know you and DUDE sound like you have an AX to grind I am not going to reason with you guys I simply dont have the time.. EARLY report have fun GENTS

 

Seriously!

If you want run a business well, you should hire the most qualified candidates from the outside if you can't find qualified internal candidates.

On another note, for the press, someone needs to post a thread that explains the 5 failures. At the 121 airlines I flew for if you failed a second attempt, you were fired.

If you were struggling at 25 hours of IOE, you were fired...

 

Guilty.. I do have an ax(e) to grind...

 

She commuted in from SEA the night prior, true. However:

• I don't believe there is anywhere on the CVR where she states or suggests she is tired.
• She did not call fatigued (though this may be due to the way Colgan deals with fatigue calls).
• She told the Fed Ex Captain who flew her from MEM-EWR that she slept well on the SEA-MEM flight.
• The Fed Ex crew on that flight, as well as the other jumpseater, all have testified she appeared to have slept soundly on that flight.
• She had a show time of 1330, so she had the opportunity to sleep in EWR (in the crew room with the lights on so nobody steals the TV - inside joke for the few posters who actually listened to the hearing)

As someone else pointed out, if IRO's can 'rest' on an aircraft, than why can't a Colgan FO choose to do so on her time off? For all we know, she may sleep more soundly to the soothing sounds of aircraft white noise than any of us sleep in our beds, and only require 5 hours of sleep per night, while some of us require 9 (which is 1 hour longer than domestic minimum reduced rest, something every regional pilot has done, and some major airline pilots too).

Fatigue has not been discussed at all so far in the NTSB hearings. Nor has human factors. I don't know who this poster is referring to re: using fatigue as an excuse, but it's not being used as an excuse by any of the parties to this investigation.

The hearing is on-going. Perhaps this thread could stick to the topics discussed today in the hearing (icing certification, aircraft handling qualities and performance characteristics; stall recovery and cold weather operations; and company training programs and pilot oversight), rather than speculating about issues that will surely be addressed in a thorough manner in the next 48 hours.

So far we know the following through testimony:

• Colgan's training at the time of the accident was not as thorough as it could have been. It has since been improved. It likely could be some more.
• It is clear the stall recovery technique employed on this flight by both pilots was not something they learned from Colgan, nor something recommended by Bombardier or NASA.
• We also know that there appear to be VERY few 121 passenger aircraft out there that are susceptible to tailplane stalls today (the FAA has issued AD's to make the 'susceptible' aircraft 'non-susceptible', so, most every 'regional' turboprop pilot does not need to be trained on tail stalls, the last of which happened almost 20 years ago).
• We know that it is virtually impossible to tailplane stall a Q400 (requires -1.5 G's and a high speed flap extension) though Bombardier didn't actually tell any Q400 operators this till after the accident.

There's a good amount we know, and could discuss. I don't see why this thread has gone down a different path.

Sorry to interrupt the discussion/speculation.

 

I do not believe a pilot must live on the other side of the country for economical reasons, but I don't believe it is feasible on regional FO pay to live anywhere close to EWR, LGA, JFK, (or IAD or DCA for that matter).

Either way the burden has been put on the pilot to find an affordable living situation somewhere. The low pay creates the need to commute to work whether that be to West Virginia or Washington. So yes, I think that when low pay forces you to commute, you can use it as an underlying factor as to why you are fatigued.

As another poster noted we will find out more about fatigue and its role in the accident later on in the hearing.

 

After watching this video I am a bit disturned with some of the things the crew did. I understand we all will defend out fellow crewmembers to the death because that's what we do and it's a part of our culture. Maybe their actions can be blamed on the training department or something instead of just piloting skills.

I've never flown the Q but from what watching the CVR/FDR overlapped some things really struck me hard. Forget the sterile cockpit for this even though that will be mentioned a million times during this investigation. I'm even looking past the autopilot flying the airplane until the dooming pitch-up. As pilots, it's out job the monitor the autopilots performance and airplanes trends and current state of flight while it's engaged. I don't see how them leaving the airplane on autopilot has anything to do with it. I'd rather the autopilot fly the plane in conditions like that so I can concentrate more on airspeed, trim, and planning ahead instead of keeping it in the bars tight. As we all know it really decreases the workload. Towards the end the snake is really coming up fast and the pitch is increasing while the speed slows. At the point the snake starting moving up, we can all pretty much agree that's the point where most would start taking action and applying more power and abandoning the approach possibly. After the plane pitched up the proper inputs to recover didn't really line up with the actual inputs. Again, I'm not here to place blame or doubt the crews skill. What hit me especially hard was the monitoring pilot retracting the flaps without the pilot flying's command. After the flaps were retracted at 80-100 knots it was all over at that point, or maybe even before.

I'm interested in seeing the final probable cause of this accident and hope more blame is placed at a root problem rather than just blaming the pilots.