Colgan Flight 3407 Continued.

Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

Seagull: Thank you for your experienced insight! It's refreshing at a time like this when relative newcomers (myself included here = right seat at a regional with 3000 hours) are "new" to the tradegy that can befall crews and passengers at any airline.

I have absolutely no issue with anything you said. I applaud the fact that you were candid in your post.

With that I just wanted to comment on the below:
seagull said:
You can be upset all you want, but I DO avoid flying on any of the regionals when the weather is marginal, and I don't put my loved ones on them either. Sorry if that offends. I used to work at one. I DO know what they are like, and I know the difference between what I saw then and what I see now.
Click to expand...
I'm curious if that applies to all regionals. Not attempting to start the "my regional is better than your regional" conflict and I am most certainly NOT asking you to name regionals if you choose to respond, but at some regionals - in particular, mine (Eagle)- there are captains with well over 20,000+ hours...much of which was in the left seat.

I know that doesn't apply to all regionals, so my question is: does your concern apply to all regionals or are there some that you lean towards over others (Again - not asking you to name regional airlines)?

If so, I completely understand given that while a large majority of the captains at my regional may have 20,000 hours, some of the pilots in the right seat have barely a fraction of that - some of them not even reaching the 1000TT mark. I, with my whopping 3000 hours still feel on the inexperienced side and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

You'll get no argument from me. Just picking your brain so to speak.

And please feel free to answer on my Private Messages if you wish.

Thanks again for the input of guys like you and Velo and many many others!!

R2F
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

MikeD said:
Same thing happened with Delta 191 at DFW in 1985. Planes had been landing before and after.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I saw the radar plots from that night and it struck me that the conditions were changing rapidly. Not as rapidly as the microburst that put DL191 on the ground, perhaps, but the weather was changing from snow to icing and back rapidly. That's tough sledding, for sure.

pullup said:
I just feel that there are some major pilots who were once low time regional pilots, but are now spouting off how inexperienced and dangerous the regional lackeys are. Like I said, they got theirs and are now trying to kick the ladder down.
Click to expand...

I certainly hope you're not including me in this generality. You can go to any airline at any level and find a wide range of competency. I know Regional guys/gals I would much rather have at the controls with my family on board than some Navy/Air Force/Major Airline pilots I've seen in action.

This goes to the age old, dead beaten horse question...how many hrs before one is experienced enough?
Click to expand...

Number of hours is a poor yardstick. The Navy used to take freshly minted (less than 500 hours) aviators and plug them into single seat fighters/attack jets and send them to the carrier. Likewise, the same level of "experience" saw guys/gals flying Hercs to the South Pole, P-3s at 100' over the Pacific and Helicopters to single spot decks in the Indian Ocean.

Does 1000 hours as a CFI in PHX equate to 1000 hours flying 135 in SW Alaska? Not hardly. Number of hours is the easiest yardstick for HR folks to use to eliminate candidates. However, sole use of flight hour totals is a very poor way to judge the competency of individual pilots.
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

I was just talking to a friend of mine who works for Colgan, flying Q400's. The day before he flew that exact tail number... He obviously knew everyone on that airplane. This is a small industry, real people died who left behind real families and friends. The last thing these people need are discussions on this forum about their experience levels and arm chair speculations.
When my friend died back in December, his family was reading this forum every day, and you can be positive that family and friends are reading this thread right now. We are all in this industry together. Even as a flight instructor, this hits home with me what happened. Had I not turned down the Colgan interview last June, I could of been on that airplane or certainly would of known the people on board personally.
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

Thanks Bill. Those are my sentiments, EXACTLY! I'm upset enough without having to read stuff that's been posted recently. :(

I just heard from FiveO, who's out of the country. He wanted to let all the Colganites and other JC'ers know he's been worried sick about the tragedy since coverage has been limited where he is. He was thrilled to hear all his JC buds are ok, but sad for the ones lost, nonetheless.
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

BillH said:
I was just talking to a friend of mine who works for Colgan, flying Q400's. The day before he flew that exact tail number... He obviously knew everyone on that airplane. This is a small industry, real people died who left behind real families and friends. The last thing these people need are discussions on this forum about their experience levels and arm chair speculations.
When my friend died back in December, his family was reading this forum every day, and you can be positive that family and friends are reading this thread right now. We are all in this industry together. Even as a flight instructor, this hits home with me what happened. Had I not turned down the Colgan interview last June, I could of been on that airplane or certainly would of known the people on board personally.
Click to expand...

As has been discussed, it is a very fine line between trying to have an intelligent respectful conversation about this tragedy, and needless speculation that hurts those who know someone who was involved.

Everyone at JetCareers is doing a great job IMHO. I know I will be paying attention to any and all updates from the NTSB and ALPA, because I want something to come from this that isn't just finger pointing. I want to see things change for the better. I don't want my friend's death to be in vain.

Let us not discuss it to find out "who is at fault" but rather what can be done to prevent this in the future.

PS I agree with the "other forum" where a poster said they'd turned off the news and that the NTSB and ALPA, directly, are by far the finest sources of non-biased untwisted information in this regard.

Everyone stay safe flying out there.
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

This just in:
Minor league ball players are not as skilled as major league ball players. -as reported
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

IMHO I think this is been a pretty civil(especially considering the circumstances) discussion. I haven't been around to read through the whole thread, but just in the last page I really don't see what is wrong with discussing factors that may have come into play this accident and others. Like any accident we want to find out why it happened so it doesn't happen again. That is the ultimate respect to the crew and passengers aboard is preventing something from repeating itself.
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

ready2fly said:
You'll get no argument from me. Just picking your brain so to speak.

And please feel free to answer on my Private Messages if you wish.

Thanks again for the input of guys like you and Velo and many many others!!

R2F
Click to expand...

All I can say is that I would jumpseat on my little "regional" any time having flown with hundreds of captains and FO's here, none of whom I consider the slightest bit unsafe or unprofessional. Am I biased, maybe, but to avoid my regional because of safety concerns would be absolutely ludicrous in my opinion, not to mention everyone here has at least 2 years in. Even when I was flying with pilots on their 1st trip off IOE, I was very impressed with their capabilities. The training is good, and weeds out the weak. I can't speak for others because I haven't interacted with their pilot group or operation extensively, but I think it's unfair to presume that legacy/major pilots are magically "safer" just because they work for a prestigious company or were prior military. In fact, pilots at these majors can switch types often and even upgrade into types in which they have no experience (I've witnessed on the jumpseat the kinds of interesting situations this can create), just like this Colgan crew. No one is immune to mistakes, lest we forget we had a mainline hull loss just a few weeks ago. Not to mention, mainline pilots are certainly not hired based on their superior talent, but often because daddy works there or you met some arbitrary profile they were looking for, and that does not necessarily mean a lot of experience.

Trying to blame this accident on crew experience at this point is jumping to conclusions at its worst. Even the Comair accident can't really be blamed on inexperience....those guys had what, a combined 12,000 hours in type?
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

Alchemy said:
Trying to blame this accident on crew experience at this point is jumping to conclusions at its worst. Even the Comair accident can't really be blamed on inexperience....those guys had what, a combined 12,000 hours in type?
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone's trying to do that, as all conversations in that vein have been discussion part and parcel from the accident at hand, but generally related to the subject and part of normal thread progression.
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

Alchemy said:
All I can say is that I would jumpseat on my little "regional" any time having flown with hundreds of captains and FO's here, none of whom I consider the slightest bit unsafe or unprofessional. Am I biased, maybe, but to avoid my regional because of safety concerns would be absolutely ludicrous in my opinion, not to mention everyone here has at least 2 years in. Even when I was flying with pilots on their 1st trip off IOE, I was very impressed with their capabilities.
Click to expand...
Here's the problem with all that: you're not really in a position to judge one way or the other, as you've got nothing to compare it to (in kind of a "we don't know what we don't yet know" sort of way). Come back in another 18,000 hours and let us know how you feel then.
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

aloft said:
Here's the problem with all that: you're not really in a position to judge one way or the other, as you've got nothing to compare it to. Come back in another 18,000 hours and let us know how you feel then.
Click to expand...

Well, I do know what I've seen jumpseating regularly on various mainline carriers throughout my career, and I stand by my original statements. Let's just say it's not a magical wonderland of perfection, not to say that it's unsafe.

Listen, I don't want to get into a donger measurment contest (that's your expertise, aloft ;) ), I'm just saying it's irrational to always bust out the "darn low timers" card before the facts are in. If we're not doing that here, fine, but it sure sounds like we are!
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

aloft said:
Just to give you a little :sitaware:, I don't believe either of the major pilots you're locking horns with right now were ever "low time regional pilots". Both came from the military, so you're kinda barking up the wrong tree.

IMHO, there's no such thing as "experienced enough". Nobody ie experienced "enough" at everything, so there's always room for improvement. Like they say, even the highest time ATP is still a "student pilot".
Click to expand...

Actually, I was NOT ever in the military! However, if the pay were high enough at the regionals, then you'd better believe that the competition would be from fairly experienced charter and freight pilots. As for us having "been there", not really. When I went through, the situation WAS as I described, with regional type carriers paying ok, so you got a lot of time at smaller outfits flying boxes or charter airplanes. I had around 5000 hours when I got hired as a F/O at a regional, and then went from there!
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

First off I'm generaly a reader not a writer on JC, but I rarely hear other pilots talking about TT as the measuring tool. Most, and myself included feel that a muti-facted background in aviation makes the better pilot. Look at "sully", Military, Glider, Regionals, Majors, etc... I feel that when a pilot goes from a training envirioment straight to the regionals where is his/her experience? A flight instructor making go/no go decisons for them, good weather, perfect airplanes. Then they go to training in the sims, where sure there are all sorts of problems brought up and taught, yet they still haven't had the gut check moment where its real. They should get out there and try single pilot, flight instructing, banner towing, and other misc. 135 ops where one can push themselves to increase their personal limitations. HOWEVER THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT REGIONAL PILOTS ARE ANY LESS OF PILOTS AS TO OTHERS!
God Bless the Crew, Riders, and family of Colgan 3407
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

aloft said:
Here's the problem with all that: you're not really in a position to judge one way or the other, as you've got nothing to compare it to (in kind of a "we don't know what we don't yet know" sort of way). Come back in another 18,000 hours and let us know how you feel then.
Click to expand...

uhhhh. Time to update your user info with those other 17,050 hours?
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

Approach Control said:
It seems like 'rapid onset' is the consensus here for why ATC might have never heard anything unusual from this crew.

Wow - and to think it can all happen just that quickly. Scary stuff.

I'm anxious to learn the actual causality. From my reading of history, the NTSB sometimes never finds out exactly and ends up having to make their best educated [analyzed] guess.

I'm hopeful that this will not be one of those scenarios.

Thanks, Z.
Click to expand...

http://aircrafticing.grc.nasa.gov/courses.html

And regarding calling ATC: they just sequence traffic. Only in movies does it appear that ATC communication is required to actually fly the airplane and keep it under control.
Aviate Navigate Communicate
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

Orange Anchor said:
My point exactly. I have never been in a Q400 much less ridden in one but now know more about it, its anti-ice/de-ice systems, active noise/vibration systems, etc than before this accident. Amazing airplane... quite sophisticated.
Click to expand...

From watching my NASA icing DVD it is my understanding that the de-icing capabilities of the aircraft are of no significance if you encounter large supercooled liquid droplets ("SLD", as you know), which are so large they overwhelm deice systems which are designed and FAA approved for "normal" amounts of liquid.

Deice systems are not required to cope with SLD because it is so severe. With that huge quantity of liquid it runs back beyond the boots and stays there and builds.

I don't have time to read all the posts to see if it has already been said, but if the problems began immediately after flaps went out that sounds like tailplane stall, according to this NASA icing DVD I got from sportys.

The first time I watched this video I was amazed that I had never been taught about tailplane stall and how to respond to it in FAA books or at ATP... like how tailplane stall is indicated by buffet in the yoke (instead of in the airframe like a wing stall)... and whatever you just did, undo it- basically, retract the flaps you just extended is what NASA says.

http://aircrafticing.grc.nasa.gov/courses.html


I'm wondering if the rain that was flown through was showing as a red return on the radar.

RIP :(
 
Re: Plane Down in Buffalo - Colgan Continental Flight 3407

KSPILOT said:
First off I'm generaly a reader not a writer on JC, but I rarely hear other pilots talking about TT as the measuring tool. Most, and myself included feel that a muti-facted background in aviation makes the better pilot. Look at "sully", Military, Glider, Regionals, Majors, etc... I feel that when a pilot goes from a training envirioment straight to the regionals where is his/her experience? A flight instructor making go/no go decisons for them, good weather, perfect airplanes. Then they go to training in the sims, where sure there are all sorts of problems brought up and taught, yet they still haven't had the gut check moment where its real. They should get out there and try single pilot, flight instructing, banner towing, and other misc. 135 ops where one can push themselves to increase their personal limitations. HOWEVER THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT REGIONAL PILOTS ARE ANY LESS OF PILOTS AS TO OTHERS!
God Bless the Crew, Riders, and family of Colgan 3407
Click to expand...

:yeahthat:

In major agreement over here.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top