6th anniversary of Colgan 3407
 

Hard to believe it's been 6 years.....RIP.

Wow. Time flies. That was one of the saddest days ever. So close to a completed flight, they were right there. :(

May they Rest in Peace.

I don't want to spout cliches, but "they did not die in vain" comes to mind.

I will forever remember the silence in the crew room that morning.

RIP guys.

Not to derail the thread, but has anyone been following any of the conspiracy theories regarding the crash?

Wow. Just, wow.

No. What have you heard, or what is out there regarding your statement? I am interested to know.

Apparently the 9/11 truthers are at it again. Cliff notes version- some lady whose husband died in the attack sued the NY port authority and the Feds killed her via Colgan flight.

"HERE IS AN INTERESTING POINT. THERE IS NO WAY ALL THIS COULD HAPPEN UNLESS THE PILOTS WERE EITHER KILLED OR THEIR ELECTRONICS DISABLED. THIS IS BECAUSE THERE IS NO RECORDING IN EXISTENCE OF ANY REACTION BY THE PILOTS TO THE CRASH. ALWAYS WITH A DESCENDING CRASH, IF THE PILOTS ARE ALIVE, THERE IS SOME COMMENT. NOT SO IN THIS CASE WHICH MEANS THEY WERE DEAD IN THE AIR."

I never heard any of this crap before either, just googled 3407 conspiracy

If anyone gets up to BUF there is a memorial out by the main road there. Very sobering I met the captain seveal yrs earlier.

RIP Joe…..

My respect and condolences to the families involved, Godspeed !!!!

I found the image below on one of those bat-shiite crazy Facebook pages. I asked for references, specifically where it says O personally gave her the tickets; I was told to please go do my own research.

I explained the improbability of what they were advocating. Here was the response:

"That's why you need to do your own research.
Who else was on the planes manifest?
We're the pilots Muslim extremists or under Luciferian payroll?
Was HAARP used on the weather conditions?

These types of executions are statements ...not just a means of getting somebody bothersome out of the way."

That's right, folks. Luciferian payroll.

HAARP.

Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie

paranoia is just having all the facts.......

I guess they never read the CVR transcript.

R.I.P.

Those conspiracy theorist have serious mental illnesses. The statements they make are clearly not made by a healthy person. Unfortunately there's a lot of very ill people in the world. Not to say all conspiracies theories are fake, but a lot of the stuff you read online are from some sick people. No amount of arguing and logic will change their mind. I don't even try to argue with anyone like that. The last thing I want is for one of them to develop some kind of infatuation with me and stalk me. Who knows the lengths they're willing to go when they think you're in on it?

Flew with a 9/11 truther a couple times, and not just a politically-bent "Bush knew ahead of time" truther, but a full-on "controlled demolitions took down the towers and a missile hit the Pentagon" moron. Part 121 captain...chew on that one for a while....

As far as the legacy of Colgan 3407 goes, think of all the changes in the last six years that were a direct result of the dirty laundry aired during the NTSB hearings...Part 117, new ATP rule, universal adoption of ASAP and FOQA, increased oversight of regional training. Meanwhile, consider Colgan's journey since the crash: gobbled up by Pinnacle, went bankrupt, bought by Delta, sold off the Q400s, forced concessions on the pilots, renamed Endeavor, became RA's bragging trophy for regional cost resets - oh, and now paying every pilot $20k/year extra to avoid shutting down prematurely due to lack of pilots! The 1500 hour rule plus 117 has the regional airlines sliding towards obsolescence, as planned, and multiple pilot groups take concessions to forestall the process even as their airlines offer huge hiring bonuses. What an industry. :o

Think about this..... Had PIC respected the stick shaker and the stick pusher, and the SIC had knowledge of cold weather operations as well as stalls, and fundamental flying skills and had she not raised the gear and flaps during the stall, would there be a memorial for the passengers and FAs, assuming that is the purpose of the memorial.

Cruel? Possibly.... but look at the root causes.... not the lack of sleep, but training/checking and inexperience issues and process at the carrier.

So, as a Professional Aviator, you can say with absolute conviction that a guy who wasn't competent enough to fly a Cessna 172 can jump into a transport category airplane, execute a descending spiral from 35,000 feet and put it perfectly into the side of a 20' building on his first try? Conspiracy? Hell no!!! That is one **** good Pilot.

Truthers would actually be more believable if they got their facts right and didn't exaggerate. The Pentagon is over 77' tall.

Would they have even known to close the chemtrail valves?

Fixed it for you, and yes. On the off chance your post wasn't well-executed flamebait, you're a poorly-informed idiot.

Yeronner, all his facts is BS and all my BS is facts. I rest my case.

You just mentioned two misconceptions common with 3407. Icing had nothing to do with it. That was just the initial thought of the NTSB, and everyone just remembers that. The Q-400 can handle a lot of ice and the tail was specifically designed to prevent tail icing. According to Bombardier, tail icing is impossible (not a very smart thing to say in aviation). Also, the FO raising the flaps was not a major factor. When she say the nose pitch up, I believe she thought the other pilot was executing a go around and sim training took over causing her to raise the flaps. And not recognizing a stall with a shaker going off is probably a sign of fatigue. Also, the point where the flaps are raise, the aircraft is 40 knots below the stall speed, pitching up 15*, and banking 70* as a wing drops. With the other pilot fighting the stick pusher, it did not matter where the flaps were at that point.

How can there still be any debate about this??

They had a good bit of altitude, if he had just let go of the yoke completely (done absolutely nothing, like he wasnt even there) and let the Bombardier engineer's design and basic physics work, there is a pretty good chance we would not be discussing this.

Talk about dodging a bullet....I have a friend who was suppose to be on that flight and missed his connection. He still has his ticket.

Omg... Your friend is one blessed individual.

Release ALL the video(s) and you will convince me, until then, I don't believe it. You're willing to make this guy a ThunderBird Pilot, I'm not. BTW big shot, try not to cover every question that you don't agree with as flame bait no matter how uncomfortable it might make you.

The Q has more than enough power to get out of the situation he put it in. He never even went to max power!

Wait... so you're an airline pilot flying an airbus and actually think 9/11 was some conspiracy? Yikes... I blew off your first post as a joke/thick sarcasm because I gave you benefit of the doubt.

You sure you're ok being up in the flight levels with all of us working for the NWO spraying chemtrails?

My point is that the wrong crew was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The crew needed to be in a different profession that did not involve the use of complicated equipment.


It all boils down to the training and checking process, or lack thereof.

23 seconds from onset of shaker to impact, power was up within a couple seconds of shaker onset.
"That's the most ice I've seen in a long time"
Ice most certainly had its part.

That in and of itself ends the conversation. If he would have fire-walled it, they would have been fine. I suppose anyhow, but(the more I think about it) the captain had no business being in command of that plane. First action of a stall encounter is as natural as it is to jump out of the way of a mack truck. I'm thinking since he lacked the competancy of basic stall recovery, it was just a matter of time before something else would've gotten him. If I were a surviving family member, I am not sure I would want his name on the memorial.

I've never understood why everyone talks about poor stall recovery in this crash. People should be talking about the fact that he stalled the airplane. Stall recovery should never have been an issue. How bout don't stall.

And yes his name should be on the memorial. His family lost someone just the same as other families did.

My ground school instructor at Colgan was supposed to be the captain on that flight. He was involved in the simulation of the accident scenario during the investigation. The power was never advanced beyond about 73% torque if I recall, the captain held the yoke all the way back and the FO retracted the flaps. The simulations concluded that the retraction of flaps made the event unrecoverable... Even with the power in the low 70% range and the yoke all the way back, the aircraft would recover in the available altitude. Unfortunately the FO's uncommanded configuration change was the final link in the accident chain.

The Q400 bleeds energy like crazy below 200 knots... Above, not so much, fatigue combined with weak skills could cause it to creep up on you.

Are you capable of answering the question without a smart aleck response or is that your normal play when it comes to unpopular speech? Change my mind with facts and transparency, key components in finding any truth.

You heard wrong. Read the NTSB report and watch the FDR. The airplane was already rolling over before the flaps were retracted. Once your are 40 knots below the stall speed, 10* of flaps won't matter (especially if you are fighting a stick pusher).

Pilots generally over report ice and turbulence. Just because a pilot says there is a lot of ice doesn't mean it was beyond the capabilities of the aircraft. A nice feature on the Q was an ice spigot. It is designed to collect ice and not remove it in order to let the crew now now much cumulative ice they have flown in. That thing will pick up a lot of ice, but when you look at the wings, they are clean because the boots can remove it. When a Q pilot talks about ice, they are usually looking at the spigot. And as said before, the power was never brought all the way up.

I've always wondered whether they thought they had a tailplane stall....... for which correct recovery is aft elevator, retract the flaps, power to a specified (not necessarily full) setting. Given the fact that tailplane stalls occur more readily with flaps extended, and that the stall occurred at the moment of flap extension, the "recovery" they tried to perform would have made sense. Obviously, it would have sense EXCEPT for the super low airspeed and stick shaker. There is no excuse for missing these cues. But I'm still curious what any Q drivers would think. Could the conditions of flight have suggested a tailplane stall?

No. The Q tail was designed to prevent a tail stalls. That is why there is a large bulge on the top of the tail that the smaller Dash-8s do not have. Because of this, there was no tail stall training given in training then. After the crash, they did incorporate it into the training only because the NTSB thought of that was the cause early in the investigation, so Colgan rushed to include that into training. Then the NTSB figured icing was not a cause, but Colgan left it in the training. I find it very unlikely that two pilots concluded they were in a tail stall without any discussion and executed a recovery procedure they didn't teach in training.

This, again? Just read the report. We are all pilots, we can all read at a High School level or higher. Just read the report and all the ridiculous questions about 3407 will be answered:

Aviation Accident Report AAR-10-01