3407 public hearing

[Socal321]

Folks, I hate to state the obvious, but this crash was not caused by an innappropriate response to the stick shaker. It was caused by a crew that was lulled into a false sense of security by letting the airplane fly on the magic.

The autopilot will do exactly what you tell it to do until it can do it no more and then it say's "I'm outta here, you figure it out." American Airlines in Lima...punched in the wrong identifier, engaged the a/p and it flew them into the ground. What were they doing? Non standard stuff and not watching the magic. It happens all the time. FMC's and A/P's are wonderful work load relievers. They do not relieve us of the responsibility of flying the airplane and watching the instruments, period.

Having the magic is fun. It's easy. The tough part is realizing that the magic and the glass make you a lazy pilot. Why hand fly the plane and really get to know it when you can hit the switch and sit back? Why hand fly an ILS to the mins when the box can do it?

Because it teaches you something. You learn skills and judgement that you don't get by hitting the switch. Watch a pilot who grew up on steam guages in a glass cockpit. He is more likely to use the magic as an adjunct accessory rather than a primary tool. Put a glass guy on steam and he's got a steep learning curve.

My point is this. I have no doubt these were two fine folks. Their loss, and the loss of everyone else was a tragedy. The only thing more gut wrenching than reading the full transcript is watching a graphic display and seeing what was on the guages...declining airspeed. And knowing that not two feet from saving this aircraft and everyone on board were two people who were not looking at the airspeed indicator. A "flying pilot" and a "non flying pilot" who was supposed to be there to back up the FP.

This wasn't about ice. It wasn't about a tail stall or a wing stall. It wasn't about a stick shaker or pusher.

It was about two people who were not paying attention to their airspeed and expecting the magic to do the job. Everything that followed was a consequence of that.

Pay attention and fly the airplane. Rule one.

You are 100 percent right. Unfortunately the end result will be more negative towards the current pilots then positive. They will come up with BS training fixes, harder checks, and rule changes to stop people from sleeping on crew lounges maybe even go so far as to restrict commuting. The real problems will not get fixed because of the culture, status quo will prevail again. Unfortunately it will take more smoking holes to fix the bigger issue.

 

[Alchemy]

You retracted them during the stall in the ERJ, if I remember. I believe the call was. "Go around, flaps 9."

You'd go from 45 to 9 while ramming the thrust levers through the EICAS and mashing the togo buttons.

But don't quote me on that, because I'm beyond uncurrent in the plane. As far as I remember, that was the procedure.

You remember correctly.
-at first inidication (shaker): max thrust -level wings - flaps 9,
-pos rate: gear up
-v2+15: flaps 0
-Vfs: set climb, after takeoff check.

I've never taken the sim into a full stall personally, although I'd like to. At the very least it'd be nice to try an approach to stall at FL300 instead of the plain jane 5,000 ft.

 

[Orange Anchor]

I'm also sick of the sterile cockpit thing being thrown around so much by the circus act that is the media.

Many within the industry do not understand the sterile cockpit reg and you expect the media, feasting on the circus, to understand it? Not likely.

 

[ricecake]

You remember correctly.
-at first inidication (shaker): max thrust -level wings - flaps 9,
-pos rate: gear up
-v2+15: flaps 0
-Vfs: set climb, after takeoff check.

I've never taken the sim into a full stall personally, although I'd like to. At the very least it'd be nice to try an approach to stall at FL300 instead of the plain jane 5,000 ft.

A few years ago we had some extra time after a checkride so we tried to take an ERJ sim into a fall stall while overriding the pusher. The sim would not do it, it was as if that part of the flight regime did not exist in the simulator.

 

[E_Dawg]

What the hell? I called in sick for an FO in a foreign freaking country four months ago because he was too busy vomiting and pooping himself after a food poisoning situation...

Stop putting up with crap like this and demand to be treated as a responsible adult. The company has to realize that if they won't trust a pilot making the call that he's unable to fly because of health, they probably shouldn't be trusting them to fly a multi-million dollar aircraft.

That totally blows me away.

Overlooked so far is the fact that, even without intimidation for sick calls (real or perceived), there is a very real financial cost to calling in sick. When you're only making 20k a year, how likely are you to call in sick if it means losing out on whatever meager paycheck you were hoping to have, or burning through whatever small amount of sick/vacation time you've actually accrued in your first year.