Plane down in BUF

[Bigoober]

"Had we known what we know now, no, he would not have been in that seat."

Wow! Now this is one brilliant man. No wonder he is an airline executive.

 

[CaptJax]

NTSB Pins NY Crash Cause On Pilot Errors

Safety board pins NY crash cause on pilot errors

By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

(02-02) 19:27 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

Pilot error was the probable cause of an airline crash into a house near Buffalo, N.Y., last year, but the accident's root problems extend far beyond a single event, a federal safety panel said Tuesday.

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board, Deborah Hersman, said the accident casts doubt on whether regional airlines are held to the same level of safety as are major airlines, and she promised the board will pursue the issue. She also criticized the Federal Aviation Administration for taking too long to address safety problems raised by the crash, saying the same issues have turned up before.

"Today is Groundhog Day, and I feel like we are in that movie," Hersman said, referring to the 1993 Bill Murray movie about a Pittsburgh weatherman who repeatedly lives through the same day. "We have made recommendations time after time after time. They haven't been heeded by the FAA."

The FAA said in a statement that it has driven significant improvements in pilot professionalism, training and background checks in the past year. The agency said it will soon propose new rules to prevent pilot fatigue, further improve training and increase the qualifications required to be an airline pilot.

The three-member board agreed unanimously that an "inappropriate response" by the captain of Continental Connection Flight 3407 to a key piece of safety equipment caused the crash. The board also said the flight crew's inattention to airspeeds, their violation of regulations prohibiting unnecessary conversation during takeoffs and landings, and the air carrier's inadequate procedures for entering airspeeds for freezing weather were contributing factors.

The board issued more than 20 safety recommendations to the FAA as a result of the accident. They included recommendations related to pilot fatigue, remedial training for pilots who have failed skills tests, making pilot's test records available to prospective employers, training on how to recover from a stall and airspeed selection procedures.

Hersman praised FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt for initiating regulation changes in response to the crash on Feb. 12, 2009, when the plane dove into a house, killing all 49 people aboard and one man in the house. But Hersman said Babbitt has been unable so far to push reforms "across the finish line" and that congressional action may be needed.

Flight 3407, operated for Continental Airlines by Colgan Air Inc., was approaching Buffalo-Niagara International Airport when the twin-engine turboprop experienced an aerodynamic stall and went into a dive. The board said Capt. Marvin Renslow should have been able to recover from the stall but that he did the opposite of what he should have done.

In the final seconds of the flight, two pieces of safety equipment activated — a stick shaker to alert the crew their plane was nearing a stall and a stick pusher that points a plane's nose down so it can recover speed, investigators said. The correct response to both situations would have been to push forward on the control column to increase speed, they said.

But Renslow pulled back on the stick shaker, investigators said. When the plane stalled and the pusher activated, Renslow again pulled back three times.

"It wasn't a split-second thing," NTSB safety investigator Roger Cox said. "I think there was time to evaluate the situation and initiate a recovery, but I can't give you a number of seconds."

Seventy-five percent of pilots who had experienced the stick-pusher activation in training also responded by pulling back instead of pushing forward, even though they knew ahead of time to expect a stall, investigators said.

The first officer, Rebecca Shaw, 24, should have stepped in to push the plane's nose down herself when Renslow, 47, responded improperly, but she may not have because she was a relatively inexperienced pilot, investigators said.

Shaw commuted across the country overnight to Newark, N.J., to make Flight 3407. It's not clear how much sleep either pilot received the night before the flight, but investigators said both pilots likely were suffering from fatigue. Hersman wanted to list fatigue as a contributing factors to the crash. The board's other two members declined, saying it couldn't conclusively be determined if fatigue had impaired the pilots' performance.

Shaw erred at the beginning of the flight by programming an ordinary airspeed into the plane's computer, rather than the higher airspeed needed for freezing weather, investigators said. The plane didn't accumulate enough ice on the wings to stall, but the mix-up on speeds caused the stick shaker to warn of a stall even though one wasn't actually imminent.

Colgan's pilot training program was also criticized for not giving Renslow remedial attention despite his failures on several tests of piloting skill and for not emphasizing procedures for recovering from a full stall, including how to respond to the stick pusher.

Colgan said in a statement that the pilots were properly trained in how to recover from a stall.

"We have taken a number of important and specific steps to further enhance all of our training and hiring programs," the statement said.

 

[SuperFLUF]

Seventy-five percent of pilots who had experienced the stick-pusher activation in training also responded by pulling back instead of pushing forward, even though they knew ahead of time to expect a stall, investigators said.

Wow. That's kinda scary.

 

[CaptSeth]

Pay peanuts = Get monkeys.

 

[Mike man]

Seventy-five percent of pilots who had experienced the stick-pusher activation in training also responded by pulling back instead of pushing forward, even though they knew ahead of time to expect a stall, investigators said.

Thinking back to EMB-145 sim training and PC's, a type ride and more PC's I seem to remember if you lower the nose to recover from a stall you will fail the stall portion of the checkride due to excessive altitude loss.

I was taught, for a clean stall: Maintain altitude, add full power...for a approach to landing stall, maintain altitude, add full power, retract flaps and gear on schedule.

Maybe they need to reevaluate how they are evaluating stall recovery for 121 PC's.

Anyone else have some input?

 

[PA31Driver]

Thinking back to EMB-145 sim training and PC's, a type ride and more PC's I seem to remember if you lower the nose to recover from a stall you will fail the stall portion of the checkride due to excessive altitude loss.

I was taught, for a clean stall: Maintain altitude, add full power...for a approach to landing stall, maintain altitude, add full power, retract flaps and gear on schedule.

Maybe they need to reevaluate how they are evaluating stall recovery for 121 PC's.

Anyone else have some input?

Exactly!

 

[jayme]

In the E120, when you test the stick shaker the test will fail if you don't resist hard against it and the yoke reaches the stop. That builds muscle memory to pull back when you get a shaker.

 

[ImbracableCrunk]

Thinking back to EMB-145 sim training and PC's, a type ride and more PC's I seem to remember if you lower the nose to recover from a stall you will fail the stall portion of the checkride due to excessive altitude loss.

I was taught, for a clean stall: Maintain altitude, add full power...for a approach to landing stall, maintain altitude, add full power, retract flaps and gear on schedule.

Maybe they need to reevaluate how they are evaluating stall recovery for 121 PC's.

Anyone else have some input?

When I started at Mesaba, the stalls in the sim were based on the syllabus for the actual airplane: climb to 10k, do some checklists, brief the stall, and then do the stall recovery.

Some of the instructors decided the "stall series" was useless and came up with some common scenarios where stall would occur and put you in them.

It was much more "real-world" and was a much better use of the scant amount of regional sim time.

 

[Simon Says]

Thinking back to EMB-145 sim training and PC's, a type ride and more PC's I seem to remember if you lower the nose to recover from a stall you will fail the stall portion of the checkride due to excessive altitude loss.

I was taught, for a clean stall: Maintain altitude, add full power...for a approach to landing stall, maintain altitude, add full power, retract flaps and gear on schedule.

Maybe they need to reevaluate how they are evaluating stall recovery for 121 PC's.

Anyone else have some input?

Not to bust on what you said, but I think what they really said is that you don't need to lower the nose below the horizon, but to lower it from the current pitch attitude.

I used to hear the instructor say don't lower the nose while recovering, but what they were really saying is "you don't need to lower it so much, just a 5 degrees or so.

 

[igneousy2]

Not to bust on what you said, but I think what they really said is that you don't need to lower the nose below the horizon, but to lower it from the current pitch attitude.

I used to hear the instructor say don't lower the nose while recovering, but what they were really saying is "you don't need to lower it so much, just a 5 degrees or so.

Maybe that's what yours were saying but I went through 7 121 training programs at 3 different airlines across 12 years and I was always taught to not let the nose drop at all...Altitude loss was always emphasized as the priority...in fact I remember being told that "you don't need to lower the nose because this isn't a 172...this airplane can power itself out of an imminant stall...no problem" during one of my first programs in the SF340 at American Eagle I recall having to get "retrained" in the stall series because I was letting the nose drop at the shaker.