Continental TurboProp crash inbound for Buffalo

[p51guy]

Pilots with experience wouldn't accept the job because of pay and working conditions. They lowered their standards so they could get cheap labor.

[Razoray]

And what about the Q8, is it a difficult plane to manage...master.....or it just needs qualified pilots?

[AerocatS2A]

Not quite

Originally Posted by chuks

So this rather dozy crew turn off the switch without adding power...

They didn't touch the ref switch, it had been turned on when the anti-ice was turned on and was subsequently left on (as it should've been in icing, they just didn't account for it being on.) In Dash 8s without a Vref switch, the stall warning bias is associated with the prop heaters being on.

[protectthehornet]

UNCLE JAY:

If you were taught that way for stall recovery, I feel sorry for you. Invest in your safety and either get a good instructor or:

buy a copy of "Stick and Rudder" by Wolfgang Langweische. Read it and learn it like your life depends on it...because it does.

[protectthehornet]

618

618 is the number of hours that the captain had (claimed) when he was hired by colgan some 4 years before the crash.

He had failed a number of checkrides in those 618 hours. His fundamentals probably were not that good and I have a feeling he didn't really have all those 618 hours in airplanes...that those 618 hours were largely in his imagination (P51 time).

AFter being hired by a colgan type place, he didn't learn much...and most of his flying was probably on autopilot...so he really wasn't very capable in my eyes...capable of avoiding or recovering. It was obvious that COLGAN didn't have the proper oversight for pilots...training, examinations etc.

And the copilot was so damned worried about the flaps and the gear...she didn't have a clue what was going on. Her background scares me too. And if she was an instructor, if I were head of the FAA I would re examine all of her students for their skill level.

[MU3001A]

So this rather dozy crew turn off the switch without adding power

No, The switch was on, but they did not bug or fly the associated higher speeds. If the pilot had reacted to the shaker by simply reaching over to select the INCR REF switch off, that would have reset the stall warning angle of attack and the shaker would have quit and the crew would likely have been able to continue the approach and land safely without further incident.

No it was not erroneous - the system operated exactly as it was supposed to.

The stall warning/shaker went off at a lower preset angle of attack meant to represent a contaminated wing, but the NTSB has determined that icing contamination was not a factor. Therefore, in the absence of significant ice contamination the shaker/warning was erroneous. The equipment worked as it was supposed to, but the necessary crew participation to make the system work was absent. No system is perfect and the INCR REF switch portion of the ice protection system on the Q400 is perhaps one of the least perfect. Its definitely not of the set and forget variety that this crew seemed to believe it was.

[vaneyck]

It was excellent. I believe Miles O'Brien, who wrote the program and appears in it as interviewer, posted a couple of times on PPrune asking for help and information, probably on the Buffalo thread.

[protectthehornet]

regarding frontline show:

did you see the way the regional airline association vice president was sticking his chin out?

the man had no shame.

I came up through 3 regionals. I quit the first for flying over gross weight...the second, the best, which did everything right...they went out of business...couldn't compete. the third was pretty crappy and I left for a job with a major.

but this was 22 years ago...and everyone was trying to be a good pilot because at a moment's notice you would be in a sim for a major airline interview and you had to show them you could fly well.

they could have done so much more with this show...for example the head of the FAA, former head of ALPA could have answered the question how he could support a merger policy which would put a 20year veteran junior to a 7 year pilot!

Could have also mentioned that major airlines had pilot contracts that prohibited deadheading on regionals!

[Mansfield]

To get a perspective on how qualified, experienced pilots can make serious errors when faced with stalls and stick pushers, it might be useful to look over the Staines report. Also look over the report on the Airborne Express DC-8 at Narrows, Virginia. Both reports can be found on Embry Riddles' Hunt Library server at:

Online Full-Text Resources | Find Information | Alumni and Guests | Hunt Library | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Follow the link to ASASA.

I was involved in the TWA 843 investigation, and it is correct to say that the airplane could have been flown. The first officer's AoA probe was defective, and actually had been for quite some time...that is another story. Nonetheless, all five (three plus two jumpseaters) pilots in the cockpit were strongly of the opinion that the airplane was not going to fly. That, plus the many thousands of feet of runway in front of him, led to the captain's decision to put the airplane back on the ground. There is no doubt in my mind that, if he had it to do over but had the knowledge we have today, he would have chosen differently.

I have always considered the cabin crew on that flight to be genuine heroes. I was in Paris when it happened; one of the flight attendants on my crew told me that I had better turn on CNN just before we left the hotel. I simply assumed, based on the images, that we had lost a lot of people and it would be a very stressful investigation. During the return flight, we did not know any more details. Following our arrival in Boston, I'll never forget going into the company ramp tower after we cleared customs. The veteran ops agent looked at us as we walked in, astutely read our faces, and the first words he spoke were, "Everybody got out. They're all okay."

292 people were on the pavement in just over two minutes, through two and a fraction of eight exits, without a fatality, despite a fuel-fed fire. Not a bad piece of work at all.

[PLovett]

And although the program was decent it did not go into detail about what happened.

I watched the program on the link provided, thank you very much for that royalterrace, and I don't believe the intention of the program was to explain why the crash occurred. Rather it used the crash to highlight what it saw as a major problem in the United States.

The program concentrated very heavily on the lack of regulatory oversight on regional carriers as they rapidly expanded and that the major carriers were entering into contractual links with the regionals but not taking any responsibility to ensure that they were up to safety standards.

By the end of the program I got the distinct impression that Colgan Air was not investing in training and were more concerned with the business of running an airline than with ensuring that it was a safe airline. It appeared to have had a checkered history of less than ideal standards and it was this that caught them out in Buffalo.

In an earlier post I hypothesised that the crew had been let down by improper training. While I still think that had a major part in the crash since viewing the program I now think that the captain of the flight may not have been up to the job when things were difficult. He failed something like 5 check flights at various times and this, combined with hasty or improper training, was a recipe for disaster.

[chuks]

When I wrote "so this rather dozy crew turn off the switch" as a reply to the post it immediately followed I thought it would be obvious that what was meant was a different course of action with the same result, "so (that if) this rather dozy crew turn(ed) off..." I have edited my post to make that clear.

So often here as elsewhere on R&N people are just going for nit-picking point scoring and ignoring the subject under discussion. "You wrote something wrong there, hur-hur-hur!" Gawd!

Look at the "big picture," please. The PF, his mind was not on flying his aircraft or so it seems. Power back, speed dropping, early shaker cues him to do... nothing so that then he gets the pusher, when he pulls, against all training and basic operating principles. To argue that simply putting one switch "Off" would have saved the day, well, how? That shaker was a very strong cue that he was losing speed there and needed to sort things out with power. The pusher was correctly actuated in response to a critical AoA, wasn't it?

Okay, the shaker came on at too high a speed but anyone with his or her head on straight should have a good look at the situation at that point, particularly the trend, when I assume the Q400's EFIS airspeed displays have "trend vectors" which in this case must have been pointing down. (They tell you what the speed will be in the near future if you do not react quickly, something like in 7 seconds.) If the PF misses it (as sometimes happens) then the PNF should say something like "Check speed," and then "Check speed, speed low," and then, "I have control," to whack the power levers WFO, lower the nose, etcetera because otherwise you are all going to DIE!

I had a sim session once where we got an elevator jam on take-off, when I was PNF. Everything went very well until rotation, when we got to see what the top of the pitch display looked like, all red chevrons, as the airplane just reared up. I shoved my column forward to the stop without even thinking about it so that we did not crash. Afterwards there was time for "I have control," and all that good stuff but right then? Had the PF been so bored that he decided to see what that looked like or had we had a problem there? If I had wanted to take the polite approach and ask the Chief Pilot (for it was he), "Umm, excuse me Sir but our pitch attitude seems a bit high to me. Are you sure this is what you want?" that discussion would have been interrupted by "Crash, Bang, Thump!"

That shaker was time for BOTH crew to take a look at the situation and the pusher was time for the PNF to be watching what the PF was up to now, given that he had flown them into a very sticky situation. Okay, allowed their airplane to fly itself into one. Whatever. Why did the FO not point out the trend, assuming she even noticed it in the first place?

Yes, this is a complicated airplane and the crew were both low time overall and low time "on type" but the deadly thing looks to me like a total lack of focus, treating the cockpit like some sort of office where you just had to sit and push buttons until it was quitting time, ho-hum and "I wonder what's on special at the diner tonight?" Well, that could tie in to getting burger-flipper wages for doing such a safety-critical job, I suppose.

[AerocatS2A]

Chuks, obviously they'd have to add power too, but turning off the switch would stop all of the stall warning stuff while they were setting a more appropriate torque. But really turning off the vref switch would imply that they knew what was going on so it's a bit like saying "if they knew what was going on they wouldn't have crashed" which is a bit of a truism.

[chuks]

I disagree...

If they had enough nous to turn the switch off, well, the power was still too low with the speed dropping, an obvious trend that any alert crew should have been well aware of, not least because of those "trend vectors."

Let us assume that these two didn't have a clue what those little magenta thingies on the Flight Displays were trying to tell them, then they were sat there also watching the speed tapes unreel, when speed can be life.

Switch set this way or that, the next thing was the pusher and that was for real, the final line of defense against a stall, when the unfortunate Captain Renslow seems to have had this come as a total surprise to him so that he did completely the wrong thing for reasons we can only make conjectures about. Not to be outdone, his unfortunate FO also did completely the wrong thing, raising the flaps when the aircraft was stalled.

Were these two just having "a day at the office" or what? A phone rings... should I answer it? Who really cares? The stick pusher activates at low altitude... should I react properly to that? Well, I guess that really, really depends on how I feel about having a fatal accident in the next few minutes, doesn't it?

That is to say, take a 16 year-old kid who hasn't even soloed yet, just one with a firm grasp of the pre-solo basics who is enough of a nerd to know all about EFIS, stick-shakers and stick-pushers, put him or her in the left seat of a Q400 sim with low power and the speed dropping so that he or she gets the shaker and then the pusher and let us see what he or she does.

Someone here claimed that 70% of all professional pilots will do the wrong thing and pull into the pusher to put the aircraft into a deep and unrecoverable stall, when I simply refuse to believe that. I bet that approximately 100% of my imaginary 16 year-old will first spot the speed trend (I don't know, should we promise drugs or porn if this is done right?) or at the very least react correctly to the stick-pusher. This is about as complicated as stomping on the brakes when someone steps off the sidewalk in front of you, when many places do allow 16 year-olds to drive!

[AerocatS2A]

I can picture someone doing what they did, leaving the switch on, getting an early stall warning and then responding badly to it. I can also picture someone leaving the switch on, getting an early stall warning, then responding appropriately by increasing power and turning the switch off or re-bugging for faster speeds. But I can't picture someone leaving the switch on, getting an early stall warning, then turning the switch off to silence the warning but taking no other action at all.

[MU3001A]

Chuks

They had bugged a Vref of 114 kts, but the shaker went off at 130 kts!

I am not suggesting for one moment that the sole correct reaction to the shaker would have been to turn off the INCR REF switch. The correct recovery procedure as always, is to reduce AOA and add power. I merely note that in this instance switching off the INCR REF switch would have been a pretty effective means of reducing AOA.

[Uncle_Jay]

Stick and Rudder

Well Mr Protectthehornet, I have a copy of Sitck and Rudder and in fact all this discussion about their low speed is entirely incorrect. "Many students think that the direct cause of every stall is lack of speed'. (P18) Putting the nose on the horizon or more appropriately adjusting the angle of attack, not necessarily putting the nose down where the wing can still stall, is discussed therein.

[fireflybob]

The control column should be moved forward until the stall warning ceases - attitude is not relevant until the latter happens. Then you can level the wings and ease out of the dive.

This is fundamental.

[protectthehornet]

fine mr. uncle jay
you
you are in a spin...the nose is low...how are you going to get the nose UP to the horizon?????????????

push forward on the yoke...that gets you out of a stall...once flying again...recover to a climb or level flight as you like...

lovely bringing nose to the horizon...the whole premise of ''stick and rudder'' is to push the stick forward

[chuks]

Mind how you go there...

A few guys managed to kill themselves in Twin Otters just following conventional wisdom, going around and raising the nose past "on the horizon." So much for "what everyone knows."

Some of this discussion seems like trying to watch the circus through a knot hole in the fence. There's a lot going on and you need a wide-angle view to make sense of it.

[AerocatS2A]

Originally Posted by Uncle_Jay

"Many students think that the direct cause of every stall is lack of speed'. (P18) Putting the nose on the horizon or more appropriately adjusting the angle of attack, not necessarily putting the nose down where the wing can still stall, is discussed therein.

If you'd said "adjust (or lower) the angle of attack" you'd be right. Putting the nose on the horizon is only the same as lowering the angle of attack in a small selection of initial attitudes. Picture an aircraft performing a loop, it can stall in any part of the loop if the angle of attack is too high, but at only a few points in the loop would it be correct to "place the nose on the horizon" in order to recover.