I was looking for some unrelated information about core lock so I read the accident report of the Pinnacle airlines flight 3701 crash (the result of a dual-engine flame-out) and I came across something both interesting and alarming that I do not think has been mentioned in any of the conversations pertaining to Colgan 3407.
Midway through the report, it discusses how the aircraft was allowed to exceed both stick shaker and pusher and become fully stalled. FDR data confirms that as the aircrafts stick pusher activated, the pilots repeatedly pulled on the control column in an effort to override the pusher. This happened not once but repeatedly as the aircraft gained and lost altitude until the oscillations became so severe, the aircraft stalled. Based on their conversation 30 seconds before the shaker and pusher activated, these pilots new about the impending stall and yet, their natural reaction to the pusher was to fight it and pull up. I think it is unfortunate that the pilots fighting a stick pusher directly lead to a fatal accident and yet there wasn’t a real push to examine if stall training in the 121/135 world needed to be reevaluated. I understand that, at the time, the focus was on how unprofessional the crew was and why the engines rotors locked, but 4 years later we have another fatal accident as a result of poor management of an impending stall.
It is unfortunate that the first accident did not shed enough light on the consequences of fighting a stick pusher. Would the Colgan accident have been prevented if the NTSB and FAA took a closer look at stall training after this accident? Who knows… But when people think about Pinnacle 3701, they think about core lock and unprofessional behavior, not necessarily why the aircraft was allowed to fully stall in the first place… BTW, all of my stall training in the sim is always to the shaker, not pusher, but I expect that to change just like it should for 121 training.