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The Bashing Begins

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All right I just read the whole CVR. The flirting story is pure f*cking BS! Any fed that leaked that conversation as flirting probably hasn't gotten laid since The Carter Administration! I don't find the CVR the least bit incriminating until of course the fatal last moments. Yes I understand the sterile was broken, but that is at best a weak contributing factor in this crash.
 
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All right I just read the whole CVR. The flirting story is pure f*cking BS! Any fed that leaked that conversation as flirting probably hasn't gotten laid since The Carter Administration! I don't find the CVR the least bit incriminating until of course the fatal last moments. Yes I understand the sterile was broken, but that is at best a weak contributing factor in this crash.

Agreed... Very weak at best. No signs of an argument either as the other rumor stated.
 
So many people are worried about how many checkrides the guy failed. It is too bad the aircraft/airplane doesn't know what your background is, otherwise you would see that many of the pilot error airline accidents in the US alone were caused by flight crews that never failed a checkride. Too bad because the crews and passengers are still dead. good luck with that philosophy.
 
Five failed check rides over ANY period of time is an indication that this person should never have been in the cockpit of an airliner. There should be no argument over that. Most of the pilots I've met over the eighteen years I've been in this industry have never failed a check ride. Ever. Not at any level. And these are pilots who have been in the industry a heck of a lot longer than this guy was and who therefore would have had many more chances to fail a ride along the way - but didn't.

This is not the kind of negative publicity this segment of the industry needs and it's infuriating to me (and no doubt, to most of you out there).
 
So many people are worried about how many checkrides the guy failed. It is too bad the aircraft/airplane doesn't know what your background is, otherwise you would see that many of the pilot error airline accidents in the US alone were caused by flight crews that never failed a checkride. Too bad because the crews and passengers are still dead. good luck with that philosophy.

Five failed checkrides. FIVE. Over a relatively short period of time. That is a very strong signal that a person is not capable of being PIC in an airliner. And this guy lost control of his airplane is a most basic way - he stalled it. That's basic airmanship. Frightening to me.
 
So many people are worried about how many checkrides the guy failed. It is too bad the aircraft/airplane doesn't know what your background is, otherwise you would see that many of the pilot error airline accidents in the US alone were caused by flight crews that never failed a checkride. Too bad because the crews and passengers are still dead. good luck with that philosophy.


You're right, lots of people have been killed by pilots who've never dinged a ride. We all make errors, sometimes unfortunately they're fatal.

But were not talking about lots of accidents, were talking about this accident. Five failed checkrides, at the very least, shows this guy doesn't handle high-pressure situations very well.

I hate to sound like an a-hole, but I wouldn't want anyone in my family flying around with a guy in command who has failed 5-checkrides if I could help it. The victims families should be rightfully angry about this. The fact they gave this guy four stripes is a crime. I hope they sue Colgan into the stone-age.

If you've been offened by the post... so be it.

Yeah, I know I'm a classless a-hole, but sugar coating a post wouldn't change the way I feel about this.
 
The news channels are starting to bash the captain of the Colgan crash. Apparently he failed 5 checkrides in his life. The implication is that he should have had his lively hood taken away from him. They don't point out that he must have passed the checkride on the next time through.
That makes for good press, but it's not as relevent to the real causes of the crash as the general public might think. We don't know who did the check-rides, or what (if anything) the reasons for the failures were. There really is no "standard of accountability" in most flight standards departments. Standards of performance, yes, but of accountability, NO.

Who checks the "checkers?"

There's not a space shuttle pilot out there whose training history is unblemished - a history of absolute, 100%, first-time demonstration of mastery of the skills and tasks necessary to fly an orbital mission. Yet, when one of those things blows apart, we don't see CNN saying that "Commander Scobee had to re-accomplish this-or-that task when in space shuttle training several years before the doomed mission" Nor do you have to look very far to find CNN's own screw-ups, they're all over YouTube.

Likewise, I'm pretty sure that the WSJ has had to publish more than 5 corrections or retractions in the time that the Colgan pilot had been active in aviation, but you won't see them trumpeted on their front pages.

We don't know who did this guys training, what training was accomplished, or what standards were applied. Let's cut him some slack until all the facts are in. And I doubt all the facts will ever be "in."
 
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Whistlin' Dan Roman, awesome username. Nobody expects pefection - airline pilots are allowed minor errors, and the system is built so as to allow the recognition and correction of these. Significant, uncorrected errors are what lead to checkride busts (in the mean, and this Capt. has provided us with a large enough sample size of busts to assume that most were fair). Significant uncorrected errors also lead to catastrophic accidents. I see plenty of correlation.
 
I'm just curious what everyone thinks the magic number is as far as failed checkrides? If 5 is too many, than what is an acceptable number? 4? 2? None?
 
....

GA busts are too subjective to be counted on as proper examination of an applicant. Some DE's are in for the busts and the money. Total conflict of interest.

121 rides are way more indicative of a pilot's skill than those GA rides.

Agree with you on that. GA rides should be in a different category then 121. Some guy screws up a hold on an instrument ride. Come on.

However, if you start busting 121 or professional rides that's a different story. Pax are paying for a ticket not a chance.

Did this guy fail 121 rides?
 
Agree with you on that. GA rides should be in a different category then 121. Some guy screws up a hold on an instrument ride. Come on.

However, if you start busting 121 or professional rides that's a different story. Pax are paying for a ticket not a chance.

Did this guy fail 121 rides?

2 at Colgan.
 
The title of this thread is let the bashing begin. I think the bashing should be directed toward airline management.
 
I'm just curious what everyone thinks the magic number is as far as failed checkrides? If 5 is too many, than what is an acceptable number? 4? 2? None?

Until checkrides and those who administer them are as objective as a computer, then there is no magic number. There are plenty of guys on FI who are ACA alumni, who went through ACA's "Pink Badge of Courage," program in the CRJ in the 1998-2004 timeframe. A time when 50% of applicants busted at the hands of two miserable subhuman checkairman run amock. Your chance of passing had very little to do with skill and judgement but more to do with luck and the mood of the examiner.

Management finally started looking at training costs when things got tight and the word came down from on high: Fix this problem. Within a year the two subhumans were gone and orals were replaced by electronic validations. Checkrides resembled something fair once again.

Checkrides at World were no picnic, either.

The idea that 121 checkrides are completely fair is nieve. That being said, it's been my experience that the bigger the company, the more fair and objective the training department. At Delta a checkride is almost a non-event, certainly when compared to the "ordeal by fire" at ACA.

Now please feel free to continue ragging on a dead guy.
 
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Until checkrides and those who administer them are as objective as a computer, then there is no magic number. There are plenty of guys on FI who are ACA alumni, who went through ACA's "Pink Badge of Courage," program in the CRJ in the 1998-2004 timeframe. A time when 50% of applicants busted at the hands of two miserable subhuman checkairman run amock. Your chance of passing had very little to do with skill and judgement but more to do with luck and the mood of the examiner.

Management finally started looking at training costs when things got tight and the word came down from on high: Fix this problem. Within a year the two subhumans were gone and orals were replaced by electronic validations. Checkrides resembled something fair once again.

Checkrides at World were no picnic, either.

The idea that 121 checkrides are completely fair is nieve. That being said, it's been my experience that the bigger the company, the more fair and objective the training department. At Delta a checkride is almost a non-event, certainly when compared to the "ordeal by fire" at ACA.

Now please feel free to continue ragging on a dead guy.

Good post. I agree that there are many checkrides both in and out of the 121 world that are not very objective.

Please understand that I wasn't ragging on anyone. Just trying to understand where some of these posters on this thread are coming from.
 

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