Colgan Air Flight 3407 down in Buffalo NY

Thank you for this in-depth reply as well as your other replies in this thread. Very enlightening.

 

"A military bomber pilot's mission was fraught with crucial decisions for some times 8 hours in duration while they were under fire from FLAK and fighters. The mission was to deliver the bombs AND get the plane and crew back safely. It took a lot of guts, determination, and the ability to make the correct decision while under far more stress than any airline pilot will face and a helluvalot of 22 and 24 year old's did day in and day out. The Continental crew ran into a situation that could have overwhelmed any crew. They just weren't lucky enough to get out of it."



I respect your comments. However, this thread is not about the qualifications of military pilots, whose performance in the Iraq wars pretty much speaks for itself. I'm not sure any of your comments about miltary pilots are relevant to this crew - did they have miltary training? I suspect the best thing to do is await the determination of the cause of this truly sad incident. Could be that no one could have saved this flight, could be it was pilot error. We don't know yet, perhaps we'll never know. I can tell you that I am utterly unimpressed that Colgan would entrust a fairly good sized aircraft and its cargo to poorly paid young pilots. Not reassuring, not what I want from a common carrier. Sebastien Vettel can drive the piss out of an F1 car, but I wouldn't want him driving my daughter's school bus.

 

Well, I'm not trying to compare military pilots with the young airline pilots that fly MOST of the commuters now. I was comparing the commitment , dedication and skill that so many younger people possess who fly airliners or military aircraft. Most of the commuter airliners are flown by those who are striving to get into the right seat of the big stuff. The airlines start them off at starvation wages and keep them there for a long time. When and if they get a chance to move up they are still not the grey haired pinnacles of experience, they're still beginners for a while. As much as you desire to fly as a commuter passenger with nothing but 60,000 hour pilots I don't think it will happen.

 

I always hand fly my approaches, mostly to keep sharp, but I have never felt comfortable letting the airplane do it...

I wonder if the crew was hand flying it if they would have felt the airplane more and might have avoided the final result... You might feel some pulling on the yoke to hold altitude, indicating that the airplane was getting out of trim, where the autopilot would just roll in trim until they hit stall...

The first indication of a problem was a 30 degree pitch up, which is odd indeed, since if you just stalled, the nose would drop, but not sure what would cause a sudden pitch up problem unless it had to do with ice on the horizontal stab....

They said the final decent rate was 800 ft in 5 seconds, or about 10,000 fpm at 100 kts airspeed, it clearly came down fast... They also said the pilot firewalled the throttles when they sensed they were in trouble, which was absolutely the right reaction. Problem was, by the time they did that they were already done for...

 

not a pilot, so pls xcuse ignorance.....

Should they have (still) been on AP in that situation? Weren't they pretty close to landing? At what point would they "normally" have hand-flown? (how far out - time - were they?) I would have thought (hoped?) they were very 'hands-on' in that situation.....?

 

is age really that important? would u rather have a 40 year old pilot whom just got his license endorsed or a 24 year old pilot with a couple thousands of hours on type.... a 24 year old fo MAY not appear to be wise enough,but any 24yo pilot who has been trained on type definitely knows how to fly the plane.
everyone has to start from somewhere right? by the time they are 40, they will probably make one heck of a pilot.

 

neesern, I really liked Bob's answer:

"Most of the commuter airliners are flown by those who are striving to get into the right seat of the big stuff. The airlines start them off at starvation wages and keep them there for a long time. When and if they get a chance to move up they are still not the grey haired pinnacles of experience, they're still beginners for a while. As much as you desire to fly as a commuter passenger with nothing but 60,000 hour pilots I don't think it will happen."

 

todays buffalo news (buffalonews.com) has a detailed analysis
Of the final 26 seconds. The plane also rolled left 45 degrees,
Then rolled left 100 degrees while dropping 800 feet. The pilots
Were fighting for control during all of this. Had to be pure terror.
The big question is, why was the plane going through such wild swings in
Direction from side to side?
Interesting read if you have time.
Kevin

 

WCH , i agree with Bob's answer as well,
i was actually replying to your previous post ,

" No disrepect intended, but I'd prefer to fly with someone more experienced. A layman's perspective. IMO 24 is too young to be reponsible for the safety of a planeload of folks."

i'm just saying that any pilot, small plane or big plane, is well trained to fly , regardless of age.
so if this aircraft had a 65 year old pilot,would you feel any better? i doubt it.

 

Sounds a lot like American 4184 back in '93 or '94. If I remember correctly, the deicing boots cleared the leading edges well enough, but the ice formed so thick behind the boots that they might as well have not even been there. If I remember correctly, 4184 went through a similar series of pitch and roll deviations and actually completed a full roll before it struck the ground. That was an ATR, right? Similar deicing equipment, I assume?

 

Chupacabra is right... Sounds a lot like the AA flight that crashed in Roselawn, IN. If I recall correctly, a couple of major FAA directives cam out after the Roselawn crash. First, ATRs where prohibited from flying in winter icing conditions, which is why most ATRs started being used on southern routes and other turbo-props started being used on norther routes. I can't think of the last time that I flew into Cincinnati or Chicago in winter and saw an ATR at the airport. Second, I think the FAA issued a directive requiring the AP to be shut off in icing conditions so that the pilots could hand-fly the airplane to allow them to feel the change in aerodynamic response of the aircraft.

The problem with deice boots is that if you start cycling them too early, you can actually create an "ice bridge" that forms around the boot when inflated such that the inflation merely pushes the ice to a new shape and does not actually break the ice off. The purpose of boots is to inflate and break the ice so it will fly off the leading edge due to the slipstream forces. If the ice is too flexible (i.e., not thick enough, not frozen enough) early cycling of boots can actually be very dangerous.

 

Excellent point about the use of the boots.

BTW, the NTSB spokesman today alluded to the notion that "this was NOT an extremely bad weather day". Hate to say it, but I suspect that we are headed for a pilot error compounded by icing conditions on this one. So Continental had better be ready with their legal team if that turns out to be the case.

 

neesern, yes, I would feel much, much better having an older, more experienced pilot, no question. Bob has pointed out the realities of life for commuter pilots, which I acknowledge without agreeing that they're the best answer for or even fair to the flying public. I also have doubts about the medical system's use of tired, overworked residents, that can't possibly be the best answer for or fair to patients - though some docs argue otherwise.

Most important, I'm not suggesting or drawing any conclusions as to the cause of this tragedy.

 

Actually it has been found that the vast majority of modern boots expand enough to not have to worry about this effect. Quite a while ago yes that was a problem but now days it SOP to upon entering Icing turn on the boots.

 

The reports say that he turned on the anti-ice very early in the flight and left it on until the stall/spin.

 

WCH , oh well, ok then ,its a free world so i'm not going to argue with you over your thoughts.


p/s, just to make you feel safe, i'm an 23yo FO on the 320/340 , hope that makes you feel safe the next time you fly on a regular airline , and just FYI, i think i know my job fairly well .

 

What is an 'atr'?
Thanks
Kevin

 

From what I have read about the crash, I think icing on the tail section coupled with no doubt pilot error will be the final ruling on this...

 

Interesting (to me, at least) AP piece discussing pilot experience and training:

http://www.examiner.com/a-1851116~Some_smaller_airlines__pilots_have_less_experience.html

Article discussing the background of 3407's crew:

http://www.buffalonews.com/515/story/579303.html

 

ATR is an aircraft company that manufactures turboprop airliners that are pretty similar (in appearance and use) to the DHC or Bombardier Dash 8. I think ATR is out of France, but I'm not sure and I'm too lazy to look it up

 

I'm not going to speculate about the cause of this accident, but I can talk about 23 and 24 year old professional pilots. You see, almost 20 years ago, I was a 23 year old Learjet captain flying both charter and corporate. Since then, I've had the opportunity to fly and train older and younger pilots.

I've never been concerned about young pilots, if they've had good training. Generally, they're sharp, not complacent, and able to work together well. I worry more about complacency in an older guy, to tell you the truth.

QUOTE=WCH;138420184]


No disrepect intended, but I'd prefer to fly with someone more experienced. A layman's perspective. IMO 24 is too young to be reponsible for the safety of a planeload of folks.[/QUOTE]

 

I think they're out of Italy.

 

I agree. Sounds like a classic tail stall... flaps down, dramatic pitch down.

 

According to some of the news released so far, the first problem was that the stick shaker and then stick pusher activated, at the same time the autopilot was disconnected and the stick pusher pushed the nose down. Then there was a rapid 30 degreed pitch up followed by a series of rolling motions, first to the left and then a 105 degree roll to the right....

Sorry, but that doesn't sound like a tail stall, since that would start with a pitch down action. (Loss of downforce on the tail when it stalled would drop the nose, and not activate the stick pusher)

Sounds more like the the airplane started to dive as a result of the stick pusher action and it was snatched back up, which caused the stall and subsequent loss of control. I think that this is where all the talk about experience and time in type is coming from.

Again, this is all speculation, but if the pilot didn't realize that the stick pusher was saving his butt, (since he was on autopilot and maybe didn't feel the stick shaker), he might have yanked it back up when he thought the autopilot had malfunctioned and caused the nose to suddenly drop.... That is, in my mind a very natural reaction. You are flying along on the AP and then suddely the airplane starts to dive. Well, my first reaction might be that that the AP had caused the dive and I needed to get the nose back up quickly, remembering that you aren't very high up at this point.

We will have to see what the NTSB says....

 

This sounds logical.
SWITCHES