Being ridiculously underpaid is stressful. There is no way around that fact. It doesn't matter whether or not you understood that fact before taking a job.

Over time, that stress becomes chronic. This affects pilots' lives in many many ways, some of which we don't even understand. I believe it is reasonable to make the logical jump that one would be more capable in all aspects of one's life with less stress.

When a pilot is stressed (overworked and underpaid), that pilot might make poor decisions on occasion, like doing whatever is necessary to get those extra hours at home before the long commute to work.

Are pilots' responsible for the actions they take as professionals? Absolutely yes.

However, nothing ever happens in a vacuum. There is always a bigger picture. Lives of humans are messy and complex. There is a lot of pressure on professionals to "put up and shut up", even when reasonable objections might be in order.

People make mistakes. Every single pilot ever has made mistakes, some of them embarrassing. Rather than heaping blame on folks for being human, it is more constructive to find out ways to mitigate those mistakes in the future.

And lastly, anyone who advises anybody to "simply quit" any job in this economy is dangerously out of touch with reality. We all have the right to work to improve our working conditions.

 

I went to the Continental web site searching fares from EWR and BUF. The cheapest one way fare I could find is $264. One ticket probably covers the cost of the crew’s compensation and meager benefits. Can anyone from Colgan share with us the average loads between EWR and BUF, also the operating cost for the 1:30 minute flight. Also how much of the fare does Colgan have to share with Continental for each seat sold?

 

I feel like I'm completely stating the obvious, but it seems like most people in their ranting on APC the past few days have been missing the point of this accident.

This crew executed the procedure to recover from a tailplane stall situation. This was everyone's initial first reaction the day after this incident. This message forum was rife with people discussing tailplane stalls. (Turboprops with T-tails+Icing, correct procedure: reduce power, reduce flaps, pull back)

I'm sure both pilots were knowledgeable about how and why an airplane stalls. The crew members acted together to fix a wrong scenario.
Tragic.

 

Tell that to someone who has gone through multiple pay cuts, downgrades, furloughs and bankruptcy.

 

This was my whole point from the beginning.

 

Listen to the CVR again. They were scared and were way too fatigued to know what was going on. The Captain freaked out and in a desperate attempt to save the airplane, ignored all of his training and just pulled back hoping the airplane would go up. They were not thinking tail stall, just "jesus christ". The first officer thought to reduce drag and all she could do was retract flaps, while that reduced drag, it also reduced lift. Then she retracted the gear. All the while the Captain was still pulling back over powering the pusher. Let's not bring up "they thought it was a tail stall" again because they didn't. Look at his training record, and look at her voice on the CVR repeatedly revealing her inexperience with icing and how she wouldn't want to make any decisions involving ice.

 

Argh you are the type that make me want to get a email from the apc police.

 

Not all of us is to blame. mesa colgan great lakes etc don't even know who I am. I would not copy my resume on used tolit tissue and submit it to the worst paying airlines.

 

This is exactly why the RAA and airline management can't just use the "pay has nothing to do with quality" argument. There are lots and lots of great pilots who went to better airlines or did something else rather than throw their hats in with the likes of certain companies.

You pay nothing and all you end up getting the folks who either couldn't find work any where else or are trying to cut corners in their career. Lets face it, the only reason people went to Colgan was the fast upgrades or didn't have the experience to go somewhere better.

 

Very doubtful. I don't even think this CA even knew what a tail stall was much less how to recover from it. Apparently he didn't know how to recover from a normal one. He probably took his eyes off the speed for some reason. All he had time to do was to utter "jesus christ" The FO most likely some time around the 20 degree pitch up point thought it would probably be a good idea to put the flaps up since they were climbing, without checking the airspeed and the vsi.

The first rule in emergencies is to aviate. Which means you don't speculate you just do what you have to do. VSI going down? Stick pusher activating? That's most probably a stall. Max power, pitch level or down and wings level until clear of the shaker then max climb.