TPROP4ever

One other thing that I find amazing since this incident happened, is just how LITTLE backpressure it actually takes to overcome a stickpusher, I was shocked... I thought it would take much more

KC10 FATboy

In the aircraft I fly, the book says once both stall indicators have detected a stall on both systems (not approach too which is the stick shaker), the stick pusher pushes the yoke forward. I don't fly the Q so the systems can be different.

Regardless, my point is still valid. Pre-stall, deep stall ... doesn't matter. The crew failed to identify all of the glaring clues that they were too slow. They stopped monitoring and flying the airplane. Once they were caught by surprise due to their lack of situational awareness, the PIC did everything wrong when recovering from a stall: pilot induced unusual attitude nose high, did not use all available thrust, used rudder to keep the aircraft from rolling out of the nose high attitude furthering inducing slower airspeed and more stall, the flaps were retracted.

Question for the Q folks, do you preflight the stick shakers / stick push during the preflight duties?

Piedmonster

Seriously??? Really???
Did Bombardier write this in the airplane manual and Colgan use it? I doubt it, I've seen the original manuals for the 100 and 300 and never seen anything like this. I'm shocked somebody wrote this in the new manuals at Colgan, much less any POI would approve it...
WOW, there's a serious [...]!

Thanks Joey, I was just thinking that!
And by the way, the Dash8 is not peticulatly seceptable to a tailplane stall. Bombardier says it is "unlikely" that the airplane can tailstall based on its aerodynamics. That's not to say it can't happen, but seriously, even the NTSB report said:
It is unlikely that the captain was deliberately attempting to perform a tailplane stall recovery.

No evidence indicated that the Q400 was susceptible to a tailplane stall.

The inclusion of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration icing video in Colgan Air’s winter operations training may lead pilots to assume that a tailplane stall might be possible in the Q400, resulting in negative training.


Also, as has been stated, a stalled airplane is a stalled airplane. An A380, B757, DHC8, or C-172 all need to be recovered the same way. In a transport category aircraft, yes it is possible to "fly it out", when you get the shaker. They have enough power to do so, but the shaker gives indication of an impending stall. If you are in a full, deep stall, you fly it the way you did your C-172... It's 101, not graduate level advanced theory.

The fact is he screwed up, people died. We do not need to try to degrade the guy's legacy, it is what he made it. Be grateful it wasn't you, or your loved ones in the crash, learn from it the same way we learn from other accidents and become better aviators because if we don't, then it was just an unfortunate loss of life. If we learn from it, it is no less unfortunate, but at least it can provide benefit to the rest. (Just remember Tenerife, it was tragic, but from that accident, we have modern CRM as an industry standard. We made the best of it that we could.)

Std Deviation

Agreed-But I tend to be a technical purest: How about the stall recovery is accomplished by reducing the angle of attack via pitch, power, or a combination thereof?

As always the case, it's impossible to determine the mental model of the crew. As CRM program manager I see this all the time. The perception of reality in fact does not match reality.

Remember in the 90's the Airbus crew going into Miami that got the shaker and pusher at 17,000 feet and then commanded a windshear recovery? This was based on the fact that convective activity was present in the area--in their mental model the windshear upset made sense and was a reasonable conclusion.



In reality? The Autothrottles had disengaged and nobody caught it.

JAHpilot

That is because you are not recovering from a stall in the sim. You are recovering from an impending stall, the shacker. The recovery from a full stall is the same in any airplane.

mooney

JSH
Are you sure about that? In our PNCL CRJ raising the flaps from 45 to 8/20 was part of the "profile", but ONLY after establishing positive control/positive airspeed trend (clean up procedure, not recovery). It said nowhere in the Colgan books anything about not raising them after positive airspeed trend (out of the stall)? Even so that's something that should be common knowledge, that once in a stall retracting the flaps is not going to do you any favors. Or is the Colgan manual just misread so that it appears that Flaps UP is a part of the actual recovery, rather than part of the clean-up procedure following the stall recovery?


cliff notes version....are we sure the FO didn't mistake the published Colgan CLEAN UP following the stall profile for the RECOVERY.

seafeye

I guess this is just a big victory for the airlines.
Blame the Pilots and refuse to believe that wages have anything to do with safety.
If the pilots were making a decent living they would be living in base and would have been well rested prior to the flight.
There were a lot of errors in this accident but to put 100% on the pilots is wrong. Management is to blame as well.
If they paid decent wages then maybe some 8000hr Unitied furloughee would have been working that night instead of some 800hr pilot.
Experience is out there. Airlines just don't want to pay for it.

JoeyMeatballs

[quote=seafeye;758043]I guess this is just a big victory for the airlines.
Blame the Pilots and refuse to believe that wages have anything to do with safety.
If the pilots were making a decent living they would be living in base and would have been well rested prior to the flight.
There were a lot of errors in this accident but to put 100% on the pilots is wrong. Management is to blame as well.
If they paid decent wages then maybe some 8000hr Unitied furloughee would have been working that night instead of some 800hr pilot.
Experience is out there. Airlines just don't want to pay for it.[/quote

thier show was like 1245 and they were on days off prior I believe. The low pay and horrible work rules unfortunately attracted less qualified people...........

Same reason I went to Colgan I was;nt competitive enough to get an interview at Expressjet, so I went to Colgan.......

Scary thing is, every regional hired 600hr guys the past few years (mostly 2007), and hell I heard Colgan was hiring guys with 50 multi, thats scary

iPilot

Makes you wonder what will happen after the "rightsizing" ends and Age 65 has run its course. Doubly so if the ATP rule passes.

travelnate

wow, its nice to know that when i'm in the cockpit watching porn on my laptop and slam my plane into the side of a mountain & kill 19 people that most of you won't blame me, but my airline for the crash!!!