Colgan Air crew experience.

[climbhappy]

i thought regions air was a cesspool, but I have alot of co workers who worked there. they're all standup guys and good pilots...of course they came from the jetstream.

 

[belchfire]

i thought regions air was a cesspool, but I have alot of co workers who worked there. they're all standup guys and good pilots...of course they came from the jetstream.

You're at AirTran I presume? At one time referred to as "Corpex South" in the RDU crew room...

We had a bunch of good shi+s at rejex...I couldda taken that pilot group (at least damn near all of it) anywhere, anytime and with a little specific training kicked arse-we could learn systems, we could learn company rules and yeah, we already knew how to fly...

We may not have known what EICAS meant but yeah, we could fly an airplane!

I dunno how many times I did it...FD mel'd (or perhaps not quite 100% reliable) and at 200' the FO calls "approach lights in sight, continue..."that fracking FD was as reliable as a rubber crutch! What a POS! Yeah, we tried to learn to use the thing...but we spent so much time backing it up with the raw data that quite frankly after the FD burned you so many times you just flew raw data!

Altitude hold and heading hold worked pretty well...that was about it.

Autoland will ruin ya in a hurry-though I'm almost beginning to think that it was easier to fly steam gauges when you are hand flying. Less information presented and you had developed a scan and a feel for what the airplane was doing. You look at an analog gauge and see where it is and watch the trend for a half a sec...instead of reading what is happening off the flat screens. And no hydraulics to bugger your interconnect with the control surfaces!

It's hard to get a feel for the airplane when you run around with the autopilot on 99+% of the time.

 

[www.]

Its being reported that the PIC had 110 hrs in type, and the FO had 7 times that amount (700+ hrs) in type.

Still uncertain of their previous experience.

He was a CPT on the SAAB.

 

[CopilotDoug]

Total time doesn't mean anything.

This is a true story. It all boils down to proficiency and not being complacent at the wrong time. Just ask Scott Crossfield.

 

[Flyin2low]

Their times were pretty average for Regional crews. The only regional I've ever seen with 13000+ hr pilots was Piedmont, and I always assumed those guys were waiting for a flow-through that never happened and they ended up loving their qol too much to go to another part of the country.

My first upgrade was in the late '90s with 2500 hrs, I had spent a couple of winters flying piston twins around the midwest before getting on with a regional, and another winter as an FO. I felt qualified, and so did all the other 2500 - 3000 hour captains at our company.

IMO this crew was qualified, and the talk in this thread about 300 hr new hires has nothing to do with this crew. The captain on this flight had a qualified FO in the right seat. She was hired with a fair amount of time and was closing in on 800 hours in type!

Welcome to the 2000's. Many Piedmont Captains have 20,000-25,000 hours and many other commuter pilots have 20,000+(Comair,ASA,PSA,Eagle).

 

[skiandsurf]

Dude, look at post number two and three. It's already been answered over and over. CA had 3000+ hours and typed on the q400 in November. It's February. Take a wild guess at his experience on the q400. Just come out and say it already, you think it the plane crashed because of the pilots.

Dude, I flew up and down the northeast in Jetstreams for 7 yrs. I flew CRJs in and out of ORD for 6 yrs. Planes dont just fall out of the sky without a cause.

I am not familiar with the Dash 8 de-ice system, but on the Jetstreams, you dont turn them on and leave them on. You wait for a little ice build up, then turn it on.

I hate to point the blame at any crew, but if I am going to fly on a Dash 8, I would like to think that, if flown properly, things will be ok.

 

[WSurf]

Dude, I flew up and down the northeast in Jetstreams for 7 yrs. I flew CRJs in and out of ORD for 6 yrs. Planes dont just fall out of the sky without a cause.

I am not familiar with the Dash 8 de-ice system, but on the Jetstreams, you dont turn them on and leave them on. You wait for a little ice build up, then turn it on.

I hate to point the blame at any crew, but if I am going to fly on a Dash 8, I would like to think that, if flown properly, things will be ok.

The Dash is a safe airplane with a great track record in Icing. I am sure the NTSB knows this.

What I don't understand is how the crew allowed their airspeed to get so low before selecting the gear down. Maybe they were preoccupied by the ICE, maybe the Captain being new to the plane was preoccupied at setting up the more modern cockpit compared to the saab. Maybe both Pilots were fixated on something that wasn't going right in the Airplane at the time due to the icing. Remeber this kinda sh$t could happen to anyone of us. Hopefully the CVR will yeild these chains of events.

Now on that note:

I am not sure of the Ref speeds on a Dash 8 Q400 but I am sure it is higher then the D300's. If we compare its kinda interesting. We can see Ref's of about 110kts at 42,000lbs with flaps select at 15. If flaps are set at 0 degrees with the gear down you would be looking at Ref of about 134kts in the Dash 8 300. So if they were flying around at flaps 5 and selected the gear down at 134kts then this situation has me scratching my head as to why they would be so slow.

I have never been on the Dash8 400, I am just comparing the numbers and in a Dash 8 300 you wouldn't wanna be that slow and just then selecting the gear down and flaps. If you did you would be way behind the plane at that point.

Combine the above with ICE on the Wings or Tail and you're gonna have a problem.

 

[batsky2000]

I think that this accident was based on a lack of experience. I say this because if you are flying in severe ice with an aircraft that uses boots to shed the ice, it is not the same as on an aircraft that has a heated wing. Those boots can't keep up with the build up of ice if it is severe. I have many hours in the King airs, and any time I was in icing conditions, severe or light, I never changed the configuration of the wing, this is something that I feel the crew should have taken into consideration, when you are that low, and picking up severe ice, its better to not change the configuration, land at a faster speed, BUF has a long runway, I doubt that the dash-8 would have used up the whole runway even at 0 flaps. If you do some research, you will find many accidents that happened due to the crew changing the configuration of the wing, were if they just left it alone, they would have made it.

 

[jmreii]

I am still trying to find one weather related accident that did not get stamped with pilot error all over it regardless of following the rules and regulations. I wonder if common sense is on any checklist??? FLY SAFELY!

 

[WSurf]

I am still trying to find one weather related accident that did not get stamped with pilot error all over it regardless of following the rules and regulations. I wonder if common sense is on any checklist??? FLY SAFELY!

Bingo, we have a winner.