Colgan Airlines stall recovery

[30West]

Flyer, I am amazed at your refusal to see the obvious and instead rationalize away the fact that this guy - this crew - screwed up in a big, unacceptable way. They stalled the airplane. Stalled it. It matters not that possibly you or I might do the same someday, or something equally stupid. If you or I do, then we would fully deserve the blame for the resulting senseless accident.

That being the case, how do you, or anyone for that matter, feel it's your place to judge, given by your own admission it could happen to you someday? What purpose does it serve to slam these guys on public forums?
A true professional will listen to the facts and circumstances, make his or her own reflections and hopefully take something away from it and maybe even change the way they do something, rather than turn it into an online mob beating.

 

[Long Time Gone]

Not only did he stall the aircraft, but was severely uncoordinated at the time. Look at the rudder pedals on the animation. His carelessness put that aircraft into a spin, and she put the nail in the coffin by retracting the flaps on her own during the spin. They lost 2300 ft in under 30 seconds, a descent rate of about 5000fpm.

 

[Flyer1015]

Flyer, I am amazed at your refusal to see the obvious and instead rationalize away the fact that this guy - this crew - screwed up in a big, unacceptable way. They stalled the airplane. Stalled it. It matters not that possibly you or I might do the same someday, or something equally stupid. If you or I do, then we would fully deserve the blame for the resulting senseless accident. If I were a betting man, my money would be that this accident will be squarely placed on the shoulders of the crew, in particular the pilot. Contributing factors may very well end up being training, work environment, etc., but they will almost certainly not be be considered causal.

Give it a rest! I'm amazed at the lack of professionalism and idiot-ism displayed by everyone bantering this crew and speaking of them own selves as god's gift to aviation. Dead men can't defend themselves. Why don't you put a lid on it and comment once the final NTSB report comes out, and THEN see where the official blame lies (bad training program, Colgan's policies, it's a joke).

 

[AAsRedHeadedbro]

30West and Fyer, you guys shock and anger me. Who the ******************** are you to tell me and all of the other guys who agree with me that I am unprofessional for seeing exactly what happened, and yes...calling him out?! This guy who called himself a pilot deserves to be criticized in public in the strongest possible way for what he did to those 48 unsuspecting people who had to ride the ship down with him after he leveled the airplane and forgot to add power until it was too late. In 24 years of flying and 18 years with my airline, I have never, I'll say it again, NEVER seen anybody do that. He made a hugely UNPROFESSIONAL error that cost 48 people their lives and destroyed as many families, including his own and his first officer's. This guy deserves no sympathy. None. If he'd simply killed himself, that would be one thing, but through his glaring ineptitude, he killed himself and 49 other people.

Ask the families he destroyed if they feel we should somehow not be so harsh on him!

And if I were to kill a bunch of passengers through my ineptitude, hell yes I'd deserve to be damned. I would have earned it. Hell yes.

You have some ********************ing nerve defending this guy on any level and then getting on my ******************** and and calling me unprofessional. You don't know me. I'll just call you unprofessional for having the gall and audacity to defend this guy on any level.

I don't know why I ever come back to this board!

 

[airplane wizard]

You would had you perceived it to be a tailplane icing stall.

would the shaker go off if it was a tail stall?

 

[LazyLightnin']

would the shaker go off if it was a tail stall?

No. The shaker is a function of slow airspeed. And no matter what kind of stall it is, the plane won't fly without adequate airspeed. It's science.

 

[Andy Neill]

And no matter what kind of stall it is, the plane won't fly without adequate airspeed.

But in the case of a tail plane stall, the problem is excess airspeed requiring the tail to be at an angle of attack creating the stall. If the aircraft is slowed, the stall goes away....but that wasn't the problem here.

 

[IBNAV8R]

The stall (hence shaker and pusher) is purely a function of AOA. To recover from a stall, the wing must attain a flyable AOA. To fly, there must be sufficient dynamic forces (speed) to support the aircraft at a flyable AOA.

Well short of being god's gift to aviation, I am expert enough to draw my own conclusions from the depicted data. While I have never actually experienced a tailplane stall, I know enough to tell the control inputs indicate the crew believed they were trying to recover from this, and not a wing stall.

Anyone else notice the plane had enough energy to climb even after activation of the pusher? Even in the stall, and after the flaps were raised, rudder inputs were effective at bringing the wings back to level. Of course I wasn't there but, I can safely say this was recoverable well after first roll departure. Raising the flaps coincided with the vertical rate reversal. This might have made a difference but clearly the Captain did not appear to be gaining control. It would be speculation, on my part, to say it was recoverable after the second roll departure but once entered, the rudder inputs stopped. Again, speculation, but did he quit trying at this point?

Are there really people on here that think the FDR/CVR data is going to somehow change in the final report?

 

[8inMan]

We can all sit here and say this and that. Clearly the basics were lost. Call it a "MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON"

They got slow, got spooked at shaker, yanked back on the stick. The rest is history. Sad, but true.

I agree.

 

[airplane wizard]

Apparently it is the following procedure:

1) do not add power.
2) pull on the stick pusher as it is trying to push forward.
3) retract flaps.
4) retract gear.

Yes, I feel these guys are being pretty badly hammered in the media. But someone please help me to understand this...

Ailerons and rudder-------------> full cross control
control inputs--------------------> Maintain until ground impact