Wow, that's amazing. Good catch Rickair7777.

How could it have not been a casual factor?

Just heard that the rest requirements are about to change...Don't know to what or exactly when. I heard March 1. Any truth to this?

Yes, congress pretty much ordered the FAA to do it following this accident. Babbitt & Co. have been doing their best to stall and delay, but they should have the new rules released this spring. Not sure when they will go into effect though...they will want to give the airlines plenty of time (maybe years) to adapt.

Two comments:

The crew should have been able to recover from a stall. Many have commented on the FO retracting flaps, unfortunately, that WAS what Colgan's FAA APPROVED training commanded. (stall recover training has since been changed)

The real root of the crash is that the plane should never have gotten slow. We as "professionals" should never allow that to happen. So, why did this crew let it happen? Was it fatigue or illness or maybe both had their plates at their sides rather than on the yolk and were taking one last look ? Had one of them been more alert, he/she could have identified the degrading speed and this would have been a non event.

I don't know, and I don't care to guess.

All we as "professionals" can do is identify hazardous situations, and bad habits EACH of us has, and work to eliminate them. Equally important, we need to put pressure on the FAA and our companies to increase minimum standards and improve training.

On a personal level, we should also realize the mistakes we have made, admit we made them, and thank Dog that they didn't end with a crash.

I'm not familiar with the Q-400, but isn't the recovery from a tailplane icing stall, Pitch-up, Flaps-up? Pitch down in that situation and you've screwed the pootch.

they weren't capable of keep the plaen at a flying airpseed, you think they were quick enough to think they had Tail ice?

C'mon now........

Granted, the airspeed was allowed to slow, but with the all the talk of icing prior to the FAF, and with that seed in the back of the head.......

Best statement I've seen in a while. As professional pilots we are supposed to be flying, or monitoring the aircraft while on autopilot. The situation should never be allowed to degrade this far without intervention by one of the pilots.

Good God, why do people keep bringing that up!

They were probably fatigued, demonstrated a lack of very basic airmanship, and there is no evidence that either one one of them had ever even of HEARD of a tailplane stall, much less knew what to do about one.

But some folks think they BOTH reached a tailplane stall conclusion instantly and simultaneously, communicated via mental telepathy, and independently took the appropriate actions???

Why is there a need to keep hanging onto that straw? It is not helping anything at all. We need the process to focus on the real problems...

1) Training
2) Experience
3) Professionalism

We have to rely on the FAA and the airlines to fix 1 & 2, but we can all take a turn on #3. I personally have adopted a more sterile attitude after this accident. Same with CVG, ever since that one I verify RWY HDG as the levers come up.

No SA Period Dot. Fatboy couldn't have put it better. That is the take home msg for this sad event. They had thousands of hours between the two of them, but they let their guard down and it bit them. Max Relax Roll...it's taught to us from day one. No excuses. Yes, fatigue, long commutes, economics (brutally poor pay and brutal hiring practices) all played a roll, but at the end of the day we can't be so negligent and kill ourselves by losing SA.