It is unclear who was in the left seat and indeed who was flying the aircraft. Given that the co-pilot was reported to have 6000 hours and to be in the upgrade process it is plausible that she was. If it was a check flight normally the check airman would be on the jumpseat with an experienced co-pilot in the right hand seat, so that seems unlikely. It does however continue to look, as I suggested earlier, like a mishandled circling approach. A much earlier post from someone purporting to be an ATR training captain suggested the machine could be a handful if it got off speed, which is obviously what happened. The voice and data recorders will give us the facts. But I would expect something along the lines of ‚weather is good let’s do a circling approach for training purposes‘, followed in due course by ‚we are going through the centerline‘ and then ‚watch your speed‘ accompanied by various GPWS warnings.
Last edited by lederhosen; 17th Jan 2023 at 15:53.