Turbine
Well-Known Member
We can not begin to express our sorrow for Colgan flight 3407. It has affected many families, loved ones, and communities.
I would like to say some things about the media.
Pilots are very well trained, and we each know that. It is a tough road to achieve your flying goals and it comes with much hard work and dedication.
The airline industry is a hard environment. Many pilots are working long days, little rest, little pay, the list goes on.
It is sad to say that a taxi driver and a janitor make the same amount as a regional FO. Pilots hold pride and honor to their job, and are constantly under stress to maintain professional attitudes and do things just right. Why is it that we strive to hold are heads high and be at the peak at all times, while many other professions are not nearly as demanding and they have equal or greater compensation?
Back to the training spectrum. If the general public knew and understood all that pilots do to get to where they are, they may wonder how we can organize so much information. Think about when you started training, it felt as if you were getting fed through a water hose. Finally after spending long hours grasping concepts and spending time in the airplane you begin to understand how the system works, and it is as if you develop different filing cabinets for each little bits of information you learn.
Finally it is easy to sit and talk what went wrong, and what could have been done, when you have no pressure, and time against you.
There are to many "aviation experts" that feed the public their say, and the public generally believes them. Im not saying their wrong, they are good at their job, that is why their experts. However sometimes they make it seem like a no brainer, and this makes the public feel like it is such an easy situation.
The event that took place was a stall as we all know. Most everybody is saying common procedure is push the nose down and you recover. While this is true for an aerodynamic wing stall, the procedure for a tail plane stall is different. In fact it is complete opposite, and when you analyze the conditions that need to exist for a tail plane stall, icing is a key factor.
Now there may not have been adequate amount of icing to cause such an event, however perhaps the wings being mounted on top of the fuselage contributed. Think of a 757, the wings and horizontal stablizier are more or less at the same level, in other words the air flowing over the wings is the same air that will flow over the stabalizer. When you lower flaps this causes the flow of air over the wings to arc down at the trailing edge. Now the relative wind is not flowing directly over the stabalizer, but instead at an angle, wich in turn gives the horizontal stabalizer a greater angle of attack. This combined with ice is two negatives.
On T-tail aircraft this is not as significant since the wings and stabalizer are on different planes, therefore having different airflow. However the Q-400 has the wings mounted on top and is a T-tail aircraft, wich is a relatively level plane where both airfoils are mounted.
The procedure for an aerodynamic wing stall is to lower the nose, increase airspeed, and then regain level flight attitude.
The proceudre for a tail plane stall is to pull back on the yoke, retract flaps, gear/go back to configuration before the stall (basically undue what you just did), and be judicious with power.
Now put yourself in that situation. You know there is icing conditions existing, very likely IMC as well and your on approach. Your low to the ground and after putting the gear down you encounter sluggish sensations of an approaching stall. Since you are low to the ground you probably dont want to nose over, but that might be the correct thing to do. However it could be a tail plane stall, so you pull back and retract the gear (wich is what Captain Renslow did).
So now you have a very short amount of time to diagnose what kind of stall it is, and what is the proper procedure to recover.
By now your probably wondering what i think happend and what i would have done.
Well i think that it was an aerodynamic wing stall. Reviewing what we know, there wasn't sufficient ice to accumulate and pose such a hazard, the crew may not have been following sterile cokcpit procedure, the autopilot was flying, and perhaps a lack of scan.
Being that icing conditions were being discussed in the cockpit, did they take action and used the anti-ice/de-ice equipment when needed? If the autopilot was flying, you wouldn't know if the controls felt heavy, wich may raise tail plane stall concerns. Was there a scan in place at the time? Typically wing stalls occur at lower airspeeds, and tail plane stalls at higher airspeeds, that would help aid in diagnosing what kind of stall would be encountered.
I think what i would have done would depend on the airspeed. Then act based on that.
Again, i dont want to be the one to sit and say what is right and wrong. I just want to give people my thoughts, so more ideas can be taken into account.
Now i have had 30+ minutes to think of all this, imagine having only seconds.
God Bless
Turbine
I would like to say some things about the media.
Pilots are very well trained, and we each know that. It is a tough road to achieve your flying goals and it comes with much hard work and dedication.
The airline industry is a hard environment. Many pilots are working long days, little rest, little pay, the list goes on.
It is sad to say that a taxi driver and a janitor make the same amount as a regional FO. Pilots hold pride and honor to their job, and are constantly under stress to maintain professional attitudes and do things just right. Why is it that we strive to hold are heads high and be at the peak at all times, while many other professions are not nearly as demanding and they have equal or greater compensation?
Back to the training spectrum. If the general public knew and understood all that pilots do to get to where they are, they may wonder how we can organize so much information. Think about when you started training, it felt as if you were getting fed through a water hose. Finally after spending long hours grasping concepts and spending time in the airplane you begin to understand how the system works, and it is as if you develop different filing cabinets for each little bits of information you learn.
Finally it is easy to sit and talk what went wrong, and what could have been done, when you have no pressure, and time against you.
There are to many "aviation experts" that feed the public their say, and the public generally believes them. Im not saying their wrong, they are good at their job, that is why their experts. However sometimes they make it seem like a no brainer, and this makes the public feel like it is such an easy situation.
The event that took place was a stall as we all know. Most everybody is saying common procedure is push the nose down and you recover. While this is true for an aerodynamic wing stall, the procedure for a tail plane stall is different. In fact it is complete opposite, and when you analyze the conditions that need to exist for a tail plane stall, icing is a key factor.
Now there may not have been adequate amount of icing to cause such an event, however perhaps the wings being mounted on top of the fuselage contributed. Think of a 757, the wings and horizontal stablizier are more or less at the same level, in other words the air flowing over the wings is the same air that will flow over the stabalizer. When you lower flaps this causes the flow of air over the wings to arc down at the trailing edge. Now the relative wind is not flowing directly over the stabalizer, but instead at an angle, wich in turn gives the horizontal stabalizer a greater angle of attack. This combined with ice is two negatives.
On T-tail aircraft this is not as significant since the wings and stabalizer are on different planes, therefore having different airflow. However the Q-400 has the wings mounted on top and is a T-tail aircraft, wich is a relatively level plane where both airfoils are mounted.
The procedure for an aerodynamic wing stall is to lower the nose, increase airspeed, and then regain level flight attitude.
The proceudre for a tail plane stall is to pull back on the yoke, retract flaps, gear/go back to configuration before the stall (basically undue what you just did), and be judicious with power.
Now put yourself in that situation. You know there is icing conditions existing, very likely IMC as well and your on approach. Your low to the ground and after putting the gear down you encounter sluggish sensations of an approaching stall. Since you are low to the ground you probably dont want to nose over, but that might be the correct thing to do. However it could be a tail plane stall, so you pull back and retract the gear (wich is what Captain Renslow did).
So now you have a very short amount of time to diagnose what kind of stall it is, and what is the proper procedure to recover.
By now your probably wondering what i think happend and what i would have done.
Well i think that it was an aerodynamic wing stall. Reviewing what we know, there wasn't sufficient ice to accumulate and pose such a hazard, the crew may not have been following sterile cokcpit procedure, the autopilot was flying, and perhaps a lack of scan.
Being that icing conditions were being discussed in the cockpit, did they take action and used the anti-ice/de-ice equipment when needed? If the autopilot was flying, you wouldn't know if the controls felt heavy, wich may raise tail plane stall concerns. Was there a scan in place at the time? Typically wing stalls occur at lower airspeeds, and tail plane stalls at higher airspeeds, that would help aid in diagnosing what kind of stall would be encountered.
I think what i would have done would depend on the airspeed. Then act based on that.
Again, i dont want to be the one to sit and say what is right and wrong. I just want to give people my thoughts, so more ideas can be taken into account.
Now i have had 30+ minutes to think of all this, imagine having only seconds.
God Bless
Turbine
