Continental TurboProp crash inbound for Buffalo

[framer]

As those big old props disc up (ie full fine and no power added) the a/c is in serious trouble if the power levers are not advanced absolutely straightaway

That is a sweeping statement and not correct in a lot of situations. Often the props will come up and power remains low in order to manage energy. The point is the energy is being managed.

FLY FLY FLY FLY your aircraft!

I agree 100%. But the question is 'why was he/they not fly fly flying the aircraft?'

No pilot should move a lever (for gear or flap ) without puting his or paw on the appropriate lever and announcing a version of :

'speed checked- FLAP-flap9'.

To do otherwise is bloody gash.

I see where you're coming from but depending on the way the sops are organised , something you call 'bloody gash' (ex military are we?) can be perfectly acceptable. ie at my current airline the PF calls 'flap 5', the PM checks the speed , says nothing, if it's below max speed for flap five he/she just selects it. That is the sop, that is what is done, nothing gash about it, we don't have more than usual flap overspeeds.
It sounds like at Colgan calling for gear implicitly implies the props coming up as well. If so , the PF will be well used to a large drag increase coming all at once. My last turbo-prop airline used to have it as a seperate call, thats my preference also, but it's not a causal factor here.(IMO).

Puting the flap up without being asked smacks of the same lack of discipline.

Again I kinda agree with you here and it's one of the main things that makes me wonder if they had indeed been discussing tail stall. If they had it would explain both the pulling back on the stick and this flap retraction as well. Was it poor flying and discipline or a result of a conversation they had had earlier? If it was they had developed a strong mindset that overpowered the view they had of the low airspeed and indications of a normal stall. It would take most pilots a fair bit of determination to pull instead of push at the onset of a stall.

[Jet_A_Knight]

Are the spoilers on a Q400 used in roll control??

If so, at what control deflection do they act?

[captainsmiffy]

SPEED damnit!!!!!

Is it now time for a serious reality check here, chaps? Aeroplanes stay aloft through the relationship of AOA and speed; you start an approach in which you have to slow down, configure and, in every airline I have flown for, meet stabilisation criteria based upon your speed. SPEED is your bread and butter here - you simply do not ignore it - put another way, you do so at your peril. Flaps are deployed to a speed schedule and stabilisation criteria is usually dependant upon speed, altitude and distance - so how can anyone ignore the speed in such a fashion? A professional pilot cannot ignore his ASI - too much hinges from it.

Why am I reading so much throughout these pages about tailplane stall? I have flown a few thousand hours on the Dash 8 311 and nobody EVER told me about tailplane stall. Was I just lucky? (I think not) - oh, the UK gets its fair share of icing, too. Never once worried about tailplane stall though.

Stall recovery - I would wager not practiced very much by any of us but I would also wager that aeronautical instinct would take over in all of us so that if we had let the speed/AOA relationship wander so far out of kilter then, to a man, we would LOWER the nose! Maybe use some of the recalcitrant POWER??!! But to fight the pusher.....come on!

Chatting on the flight deck? Maybe a slight distraction; we all do it (be honest!) but it rarely impinges on the operation and, if it has, SHUTUP!!

Afraid to say so but I think that this aeroplane was crewed by people spectacularly ill-fitted for the job. I am far, far from perfect but there are some basic tenets in aviation that are simply sacrosanct. If you are flying an aeroplane and you abuse the very laws that are working to enable you to fly then you are going to come a cropper. FACT.

I hope that the various training organisations involved here take a cold, hard look at themselves - as well as the checkers and the regulators.

I know that I will have upset people here but these basic aerodynamic laws are inviolate and this has been shown to be the case. If you do not have a healthy regard for them then you shouldn't be flying.

Yes, fatigue is a huge issue but, if you are so punch-drunk fatigued that you can't keep the speed under control on the approach then you simply should not have boarded the aircraft. That is a personal responsibility. The pay issues etc, whilst terrible, are simply a smokescreen to why this happened.

These are truths; lambast me if you will but they need to be spoken. For the record I have flown 10500 hours, have taught basic PPL flying for 3000 of them and have flown the Dash, regional jets and wide-body jets. I have deliberately stalled the Dash on various occasions on air test and I understand what it is like to fly a hard, unforgiving roster at both ends of the day. I therefore feel qualified to give a few home truths on this forum when I feel that they are needed.

[justanotherflyer]

if you are so punch-drunk fatigued that you can't keep the speed under control on the approach then you simply should not have boarded the aircraft. That is a personal responsibility. The pay issues etc, whilst terrible, are simply a smokescreen

You are surely overestimating the capacity of many individuals to risk getting fired. More often they will proceed to fly while fatigued "just this one more time".

I understand what it is like to fly a hard, unforgiving roster at both ends of the day.

The problem is that we have acquiesced in these "hard unforgiving rosters", managements have fine-tuned their ability to manipulate them (and us), regulators (and with a few noble exceptions the media) have ignored them, and the passengers have no way of telling whose attention is slipping in the cockpit, or how many times automatic systems or devices have saved the day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/ny...7pilot.html?hp

[captainsmiffy]

Justanotherflyer....are you really telling me that people are turning up for work in a state in which they could not control the speed on finals nor recognise and react to a stall! These are such entrenched skills.....or they should be. I am tired, I flew last night and got into bed at 2am; I will be flying again at midnight the following night on an all-nighter. However, I am professional enough to realise when enough is enough and I have never, despite crewings best attempts at making me so, been so punch drunk so as to be unable to operate nor have a clue what was going on around me. Yes, fatigue is a HUGE issue but there are some very serious underlying problems apparent in that crew and how they operated the aircraft - Condition levers to max with no power (massive airbrakes then, as ANY turboprop pilot will tell you); no monitoring of airspeed (examine how frequently you look at the ASI on an approach. You dont ignore it for the major part of 19 seconds, that is for sure!); mis-handled stall recovery; fixation on tailplane stall? What did they think the stick pusher was doing? Come on ......REALITY CHECK!!

If the fatigue issue is so HUGE in the states then get on to the regulators and the politicians.....(and I, for one, won't be flying regional in the US if things are really as bad as your article would have me to believe)

[xyze]

Most on this forum seem intent on crucifying the crew. Not a fitting reaction from the professional group whose lobbying against blanket findings of simple 'pilot error' following air accidents drove the development of the multi-faceted and exhaustive post-accident investigative process that has made flying the safe form of transport it is today.

As has been pointed out already (see post 1093) - but seemingly largely ignored by most - the crew had mentally programmed themselves, and set the bugs, to fly to the numbers 114 and 118 on the approach, but had programmed the aircraft to give a stall warning at a speed significantly higher than this through the ice protection system. The reasons WHY they did this are likely to be many but fatigue and distraction as a result of the conversation they were having are likely to be factors.

Given their mental programming, reinforced by the bugged speeds in front of them, the drop in airspeed after Max Condition was selected was not 'negligence' but more likely planned energy management - they wanted the airspeed to drift down to the approach speed - 118 - they saw bugged in front of them. The stall warning/ stick shaker followed shortly by the autopilot disconnect horn at 130kts, then, was completely unexpected - so much so that it may not even have been recognised for what it was; neither pilot mentions the word 'stall' at all. By the time the stick pusher activates - 7 seconds into the upset - the crew were most likely completely bewildered by what was happening and the 'push' on the control column then became just another control column force to work against. Mental preconditioning can be very hard to break - they were not EXPECTING to stall at the speed they were flying -therefore nothing that happened would have made sense to them. Add in fatigue, distraction, inexperience and it all perhaps is more understandable - without having to deride the crew involved.

Just as an aside. For an example of how hard mental preconditioning is to break, think of the Air New Zealand accident in Antarctica in 1979. Jim Collins was not expecting Mt Erebus to be in front of him - mentally he was flying the track down the flat sea ice of McMurdo sound that had been briefed the week prior. The crew's mistaken belief about their position was reinforced by sector whiteout. When the GPWS sounded and the FE read off the rapidly decreasing height, rather than immediately firewalling the engines himself and heaving back on the control column for all he was worth, something he would surely have done had the volcano in front of him suddenly become visible - and something that was acknowledged at the Royal Commission may have saved the aircraft - he simply called for 'go around power please'. This is not a criticism of that crew at all, just an example of the importance of mental conditioning on the reaction to, and recognition of, a given stimulus.

[pax2908]

Do I understand correctly, that getting stickshaker activation (not even actually stalling the a/c) is considered so unlikely, that some operators never train pilots to "instinctively" (automatically) react to this situation?

[captainsmiffy]

There are certain things in aviation that you just react to - EGPWS warnings and stall warnings come to mind - and THEN you sort out the 'why' the 'how' and the 'what'; point taken about the bugged speeds, am too busy to plough through the entire thread to have seen that one but a stick pusher with a decaying speed (rapidly decaying!) sends alarm bells out to me. OK, I have been an instructor for a few years and maybe have stalled more aeroplanes than some but I would hope and pray that when I am a passenger the guys up front would be alive to the possibilities and to react accordingly. Can sort the reasons out later - might even be spurious but you don't have the luxury of time in such an event.

[Otto Throttle]

Jet Knight

"Are the spoilers on a Q400 used in roll control??

If so, at what control deflection do they act?"



No. Spoilers on the Q400 are purely used as lift dumpers on the ground only. They do not operate in flight in any capacity, and cannot be manually deployed in flight.

There is a toggle switch on the Captain's side of the glareshield, which commands the spoilers to operate in either "Ground" or "Flight" logic. When selected to "Flight", all this switch does is ensure that spoilers are deployed when certain parameters are met (those consistent with WoW following a landing roll), and are retracted automatically if the power levers are advanced beyond a certain power lever angle (somewhere around 40 degrees if memory serves correctly).

If you ever watch a Q400 on line up, you will most likely see the spoilers deploy (depending at which point in the airline checklist the spoiler switch is set to "Flight" they may already be deployed during taxying). They will remain deployed until the power is advanced towards the take-off power setting detent, at which point you will notice them retract. They will not deploy again until either a rejected take-off is detected, or the aircraft next lands.

[FL370 Officeboy]

Otto Throttle

I'm afraid you're wrong. The spoilers on the Q400 are indeed used for roll control. You make an observation about the spoilers coming up on selection of 'flight' - what do you think happens when the full and free check is done? If you're not qualified to make an accurate comment then please do not!

[Zeffy]

Rising red bricks

Given their mental programming, reinforced by the bugged speeds in front of them, the drop in airspeed after Max Condition was selected was not 'negligence' but more likely planned energy management - they wanted the airspeed to drift down to the approach speed - 118 - they saw bugged in front of them.

How could they fail to notice that the bugs were set below the value of the red bricks depicting the low speed cue?

Refer to slide #2 of the Bombardier presentation.

Did their training omit to note that Vref should be above the LSC?

[xyze]

From the CVR Transcript:

21:53:40.2 HOT-2
alrighty your numbers. for flaps fifteen runway two three are eighteen and fourteen.
21:53:47.5 HOT-1
alrighty eighteen and fourteen

then later, during the approach briefing..

22:05:29.5 HOT-1
... uh we got the weather. bugs are set eighteen
fourteen flaps fifteen. uh off of twenty three I forget let me look it up.

Whatever their instruments were actually showing them - and we have no way of knowing that, as has been discussed earlier in the thread - they were seeing, for whatever reason, bugged speeds of 114 and 118 with no warnings that these were inappropriate. The mental trap was set.

[Zeffy]

Whatever their instruments were actually showing them - and we have no way of knowing that, as has been discussed earlier in the thread - they were seeing, for whatever reason, bugged speeds of 114 and 118 with no warnings that these were inappropriate.

We have "no way of know what the instruments were showing" -- yet we know what they were "seeing"?

[xyze]

Showing = Objective

Seeing = Subjective

We can infer from what the captain said during the approach briefing he gave that he was seeing bugs at 114 and 118 with no alerts. We have no way of knowing whether or not he was being shown (but not seeing/ registering) the red bricks on the speed tape which would have told him that his bug speeds were wrong.

[Stubs400]

Jet A Knight:

For roll control, there's a very small spoiler null around neutral to minimize drag in cruise, otherwise they work together with the ailerons.

Here's a couple quotes from some Q400 paperwork:

"The pilot's control handwheel operates the spoiler control circuit and
the copilot's control handwheel operates the aileron control circuit.
The control handwheels are connected to each other so that either
control handwheel operates both circuits at the same time. This lets
the aircraft be flown from either the pilot's or copilot's position. If
either control circuit becomes jammed, the ROLL DISC handle is
pulled to disconnect the aileron system from the roll spoiler system.
The pilot with the unjammed control handwheel maintains roll control
of the aircraft."

"The spoiler panels are deployed symmetrically to decrease or
'dump' the lift made by the wings. This action puts all of the weight of
the aircraft on the landing gear, so that the wheel brakes can slow
the aircraft more efficiently.
The flight spoilers are symmetrically deployed as ground spoilers,
when signalled by the Weight-On-Wheels (WOW) and power lever
sensors, if the spoiler FLIGHT/TAXI switch is in the FLIGHT position.
The roll spoiler system automatically changes from the flight mode to
the ground mode after the aircraft has landed. The roll spoilers
operate symmetrically on landing (overriding flight mode operation)."

And, of course, if you advance power levers for go around, they revert to flight mode.
I hope that helps.

Stubs400

[Zeffy]

We can infer from what the captain said during the approach briefing he gave that he was seeing bugs at 114 and 118 with no alerts.

So "we" are inferring that the red bricks of the Low Speed Cue weren't functioning or displayed on this sector?

[MU3001A]

Absent a heavy load of ice, this accident would appear to be the result of an inappropriately flown recovery from a 'false' indication of an imminent stall. Perhaps the most effective way to prevent a re-occurrence would be to require training in and have SOP's that mandate, the higher approach speeds are bugged and flown whenever the INCR SPEED switch is used. Perhaps that is already Colgan's policy and this crew ignored it, does anyone know? If not, it should be IMHO.

[Will Fraser]

First, know thy aircraft.

[protectthehornet]

which crash does colgan remind you of?

i think it is like tha C5 Galaxy that crashed at Dover AFB.

Day VFR, one engine shut down, but no real problems, and HIGHLY TRAINED and properly paid USAF(reserve) crew got too slow.

I think both crashes are related to the way Air Speed is shown on modern/glass flight displays.

I'll take the steam gauges anyday.

AND I wish we had a cockpit video recorder showing us what the instruments showed the pilots.

[Will Fraser]

PTH- A "CVidR" would be invaluable as a training tool and debrief/incident analysis. If it gets used as a post accident tool, so be it. If all it does is hang over the dullard as a sword of Damocles, so also be it. Precious little attention is paid the CVR, though, as this recent accident shows.