Atlas Air 3591 NTSB Public Docket Opened

[Airbubba]

Originally Posted by Check Airman

Your hunch doesn't seem to be correct in this case.

Really? So he was hired for his ability on merit? I think the record clearly indicates otherwise.

From earlier in this thread:

Originally Posted by Disso

The FO, given his egregious history of abysmal flying capacity and ineptitude (which I will paste below), had a documented track record of overreacting in unreasonable, irrational ways to 'stalling' states of aircraft by pushing the nose forward past any remotely reasonable degree of 'recovery'. He was documented to freak the F out when startled in precisely THESE type of situations, as has been documented. He should have never been in the seat that fateful day, and didn't deserve to [be].

Training Incompetency and Failures

• 6/27/11 - Resigned from CommutAir for failing DHC-8 initial
• 8/13/12 - Resigned from Air Wisconsin for failing CRJ initial
• 4/22/14 - Failed EMB-145 Oral at Trans State Airlines
• 5/11/14 - Failed EMB-145 Type Rating at Trans States Airlines
• 5/17 - Failed EMB-175 Upgrade Attempt at Mesa Airlines
• 5/17 - Nearly failed FO Requal after failing upgrade attempt at Mesa Airlines
• 7/27/17 - Failed B-767 Oral at Atlas Air
• 8/1/17 - Unsat Judgement/Situational Awareness during FBS-1 at Atlas Air
• 8/5/17 - Failed DBS-5 at Atlas Air
• 8/11/17 - Almost Failed FFSI-1 at Atlas Air
• 8/31/17 - "Regression of Situational Awareness" during FFSI-3 at Atlas Air
• 9/22/17 - Failed B-767 Type Rating for "Very Low Situational Awareness", incomplete procedures, and exceeding limitations at Atlas Air

Past Training Notes (directly quoted from the NTSB Docket)

• Air Wisconsin CRJ Initial Failure - "They were conducting the emergency procedure cabin altitude ... where they are at FL350 or so, and he gives the students a cabin altitude message requiring an emergency descent to 10,000 feet" ... "Conrad then goes to descend the simulator. He was not sure of Conrad's background, but instead of descending on the autopilot, Conrad disengaged the autopilot and abruptly pitched down well below horizon. They got stick shaker and overspeed alert together. He was not sure if it was an extreme nose down, but remembered that it was abrupt input on the controls"
• Mesa Airlines ERJ-175 Upgrade Failure (Instructor 1) - "He had previously failed simulator lesson 2 with different instructor, and he had requested a different instructor. She was conducting his retraining for lesson 2. She said his performance was a "train wreck" and he performed very poorly in this lesson. In the briefing room he did well, and explained things well. However, in the simulator and something he wasn't expecting happened he got extremely flustered and could not respond appropriately to the situation." ... "When asked about her comment in her notes about Conrad's "lack of understanding of how unsafe he was," she said he was making very frantic mistakes, lots and lots of mistakes, and did a lot of things wrong but did not recognize this was a problem. He thought he was a good pilot never had any problems and thought he should be a captain. he could not evaluate himself and see that he did not have the right stuff."
• Mesa Airlines ERJ-175 Upgrade Failure (Instructor 2) - "He first met Conrad Aska during a recurrent checking event in March 2016. That session went ok and nothing stood out. He did have some trouble with the stall series. The problems were with his attitude control, and he had a hard time getting the airplane back to level flight" ... "He said when Conrad would make a mistake in training he had an excuse for everything"

The quote that stands out the most to me in this second Mesa instructor interview is, "When asked if Conrad would get startled in the simulator, he said that during one stall recovery, Conrad pitched down about 40 degrees for recovery, then a pitch up about 20 degrees. His flight path was all over the place."

As I mused here earlier:

Originally Posted by Airbubba

Will the NTSB address these multiple training failures with a call for higher employment standards for transport category pilots? Or will they call for even more remedial training for those folks who can't do the job?

Similarly, is an occasional crash just the price we pay for overlooking a horrible training record in an effort to embrace a broader workplace recruitment demographic?

Things seemed to tighten up around the training building at many places after the Colgan crash for those 'frequent flyers' in the sims who never passed their checkrides without a lot of additional instruction. 709 rides were given by the FAA and a few of the legacy problem children quietly negotiated non-contractual early retirements and cash settlements in lieu of company provided training to get their tickets back.

The 1996 Pilot Records Improvement Act (PRIA) was intended to flag imposters and folks with training issues prior to hiring. Unfortunately, the current custom seems to be to offer a pilot being terminated for cause a chance to resign to avoid further litigation. The union and in many cases gender and ethnic advocacy groups cut a deal with the company and nothing adverse shows up on the PRIA record.

The FO's family has sued claiming that the plane and his Atlas training did not prevent the crash.

The surviving family of Aska, who died at 44, claims in a new lawsuit that negligence from Atlas Air and Amazon, as well as Florida-based companies F&E Aircraft Maintenance and Flightstar Aircraft Services, "directly and proximately caused the death" of the pilot. The family is suing the four companies in a lawsuit filed on Sept. 19 in the 11th Circuit Court for the State of Florida.

Atlas Air, which is contracted to fly Amazon Air's planes along with air cargo company ATSG, employed Aska. The company, according to the federal suit, "owed a duty to the decedent to maintain and use the subject aircraft with the highest degree of care, including a nondelegable duty to ensure its airworthiness, and to exercise the highest degree of care to prevent injury of any kind."

The airline also failed to ensure pilots were well-trained or well-rested, the suit states. The lawsuit claims that Amazon also played a role in those actions.

https://www.businessinsider.com/amaz...ots-sue-2019-9

Anyway, I expect that the NTSB will be mystified as to why such a horrible training record was repeatedly overlooked by multiple employers. And, until a freighter hits a city, there will be 'no significant loss of life' in these mishaps with good aircraft and poor pilots.