Update on 3407

[mrivc211]

Just got a spank on the hand for that. Only missing 3 pages out of what......1000? Even though I passed my PC with flying colors today.

 

[EDUC8-or]

Let me throw in my two cents. When we were doing stall training in the Dornier 328 at Skyway our main goal in stall training was to NOT LOSE ALTITUDE.

We would set it up flying level at 150 knots or so then power back and configure (if necessary). As the airplane slowed there was the usual tendency to pitch down which we would counter with trim. Per the procedure we weren't allowed to trim below 120 so we had only our muscles to maintain altitude.

By the time the airplane stalled at around 100 knots you were pulling back just about as hard as you could with one hand - it was a real handful. At the stall the procedure had you go to full power AND NOT LOSE ALTITUDE, which necessitated just about full back pressure on the yoke.

If you have a stall recovery procedure where, every time the stick shaker went off you were yanking back on the yoke as hard as you could AND CONTINUED TO DO SO AS PART OF THE RECOVERY PROCEDURE is there a chance that when the stick shaker went off for real that you would revert to the "muscle memory actions" that were drilled into you during training?

This is just a theory on my part that I'm throwing out there to get opinions on. I have no knowledge on what Colgan's stall recovery procedure was. I'm making the assumption :crazy: that it was similar to ours at Skyway.

We are taught to respect the shaker during stall recovery, if you get a pusher (which you DEFINITELY would using the technique you've described) it's a bust.

 

[seagull]

I have a good synopsis on these accidents. Its in print form, so I'd have to mail it to you. In any initial training in the AF, one of the things you're given is a compilation of (releasable, no priviliged information) accidents particular to that airframe throughout the years. It's really good reading and learning...and I still have mine for the T-37/38, as well as the A-10. Very interesting stuff, and good points taken out....from pilot error, to mechanical, to WX.....no one is really immune, unfortunately.

PM me and I'll send it to you.

EDIT: wrote some more to my previous post above.

TGrayson, if he mails it to you, bring it over and I'll scan it and turn it into a PDF for you.

 

[SpiceWeasel]

We are taught to respect the shaker during stall recovery, if you get a pusher (which you DEFINITELY would using the technique you've described) it's a bust.

Hmm we don't get bust for stick pusher (Pinnacle Airlines), we just get, release pressure and then once the pusher goes away pitch back up "respecting" the shaker. CRJ900 still has the profiles too!

 

[tonyw]

250hr FO's are OK, and you're good to go with 15:59 duty time and 8hrs rest, but god help you if you forgot to remove that 10-8 from the last revision.

Makes perfect sense, eh?

When will they get EFBs to everyone and stop screwing around with this? I mean, I'm just crazy, thinking that it would be a good idea to have those instead of having someone who forgot to update his stuff, or God forbid, missed a page or two.

I think I'm going to hang around in crew lounges around the time the revisions come out and say, hey, dude, give me $50 and I'll fix it for you.

 

[Polar742]

Just a quick thought:

The issue was a high altitude stall, not a low altitude stall.

If you're down close to the dirt, you don't want to lose much if any altitude.

If you stall a jet up high, and are lucky enough not to have blanked out the tail, you will lose a lot of altitude.

So teach pilots how to recover in a stall at FL400 versus the close to the dirt scenario we all practice. I haven't done a high altitude stall, but I'd bet dollars to donuts a thousand feet or more would be required to recover satisfactorily.

I think, if anything, there should be an additional stall scenario in training to add the high altitude stall, not cancel out low altitude stalls.

 

[jtrain609]

Just a quick thought:

The issue was a high altitude stall, not a low altitude stall.

If you're down close to the dirt, you don't want to lose much if any altitude.

If you stall a jet up high, and are lucky enough not to have blanked out the tail, you will lose a lot of altitude.

So teach pilots how to recover in a stall at FL400 versus the close to the dirt scenario we all practice. I haven't done a high altitude stall, but I'd bet dollars to donuts a thousand feet or more would be required to recover satisfactorily.

I think, if anything, there should be an additional stall scenario in training to add the high altitude stall, not cancel out low altitude stalls.

Conversely if you screw up that low altitude stall recovery and go from an imminent stall to a full stall then you're going to lose a lot more altitude than if you had lowered the nose and decreased AOA a bit eh? Especially in a 74,000 lbs. transport category aircraft.

Or said another way, these guys might have been able to lower the nose, take a 500' loss in altitude an survived over doing the "proper procedure" and hitting the ground.

But I guess that opens up the debate of whether basic airmanship (seeing that you're up the creek without a paddle and that you need to move yourself slightly outside the SOP to survive) and following procedures to the letter, all the time.

 

[tonyw]

I think, if anything, there should be an additional stall scenario in training to add the high altitude stall, not cancel out low altitude stalls.

Question for you -- how much altitude does a transport category aircraft lose during a stall? I'm curious, because the Colgan crash involved a plane that was at a low altitude.

You can recover from a stall in a 172 in 100 feet. I'm sure it takes a lot more altitude to do it in a transport category aircraft.

 

[Polar742]

Conversely if you screw up that low altitude stall recovery and go from an imminent stall to a full stall then you're going to lose a lot more altitude than if you had lowered the nose and decreased AOA a bit eh? Especially in a 74,000 lbs. transport category aircraft.

Or said another way, these guys might have been able to lower the nose, take a 500' loss in altitude an survived over doing the "proper procedure" and hitting the ground.

But I guess that opens up the debate of whether basic airmanship (seeing that you're up the creek without a paddle and that you need to move yourself slightly outside the SOP to survive) and following procedures to the letter, all the time.

Okay, this is where I get all "gruff".

Here's the deal. I'm all about making everyone better, and training to improve and all that.

At the end of the day, if you are unable to discern a high altitude stall from a low altitude stall, you shouldn't be flying me around.

Spare me from the "workload" argument. If any stall warning goes off, and you are unable to drop what you're doing and fly the airplane, you shouldn't be flying me around.

Save the "in an Emergency" argument. In an emergency, in a two pilot plane, one should fly (sans the momentary confirmation to make sure your flying partner doesn't shut down a good motor) and only fly.

I've trained approaches to stalls (because, really, isn't that what the discussion seems to be about with all this talk of the shaker - and the plane isn't stalled at that point) in aircraft from weights of a couple thousand pounds to over 800,000 lbs. If you properly execute an approach to a stall and recover at the first indication, the transport aircraft all preform the same.

 

[Polar742]

Question for you -- how much altitude does a transport category aircraft lose during a stall? I'm curious, because the Colgan crash involved a plane that was at a low altitude.

You can recover from a stall in a 172 in 100 feet. I'm sure it takes a lot more altitude to do it in a transport category aircraft.

We typically train an "approach to stall" in all the aircraft I've done. That consists of recovery at the first indication.

In the whale, at landing weights, we did a full stall demo in training. I lost a couple hundred feet.

However, in the approach to stall, the jets seem like forever and a day before they do anything. The tprops seemed to have a more instantaneous acceleration when power is applied, just due to the physics of the powerplants, and how they accelerate the air to produce thrust.

 

[Minuteman]

FAA probes Colgan on pilot overscheduling
By Jerry Zremski
NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Copyright 2009 The Buffalo News

WASHINGTON—The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating whether Colgan Air — which operated the Continental Connection commuter plane that crashed in Clarence Center on Feb. 12 — violated federal rules by overscheduling its pilots.

Meanwhile, sources said the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation of the crash is increasingly focusing on Colgan’s pilot-training program, particularly pertaining to how the plane’s stall-protection system operates in icing conditions.

...​

The board previously listed “fatigue management” and “stall recovery training” as factors that it was studying as it searched for a probable cause for the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407, which claimed 50 lives, including one on the ground.

At this point, however, it is unclear whether the FAA investigation is connected in any way to the Clarence Center crash.

“A small number” of Colgan pilots and the airline itself have received letters of investigation from the FAA, the Colgan pilots union said in an April 20 memo to its members that never mentions the Buffalo-area crash.

Agency officials have audited Colgan pilot schedules dating from last November, and “through this process they have identified a small group of pilots who, they believe, have violated flight-time or duty-time regulations,” said the memo, which was obtained by The Buffalo News.

...​

Meanwhile, the National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the Clarence Center crash is raising questions about an unusual feature of the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 aircraft’s stall-protection system — and whether the crew of the doomed plane was properly trained to know how that system worked in icing conditions.

At issue is the plane’s “REF speeds” switch, a toggle in the cockpit that aims to account for the fact that planes stall at a higher rate of speed when they have ice on their wings.

When the REF, or reference speed, switch is set on “INCR,” the stall-warning system will activate at a speed that’s about 20 knots higher than it would when it is in the off position.

Sources said the switch was in the “INCR” or increase position on Flight 3407, as it should have been—although the crew might not have known that this would activate the stall-warning system much more quickly than normal.

...​

 

[kellwolf]

Question for you -- how much altitude does a transport category aircraft lose during a stall? I'm curious, because the Colgan crash involved a plane that was at a low altitude.

You can recover from a stall in a 172 in 100 feet. I'm sure it takes a lot more altitude to do it in a transport category aircraft.

Per the "approach to stall," as Polar mentioned, if you fly by the profile and recover at the first indication (shaker,) you can get by in the CRJ with not losing ANY altitude. At least that's the sim. Never tried it in the real plane. A full stall with the shaker and the pusher, you're gonna lose 100-200 ft. Depends on how deep you get the pusher. That's all low altitude stuff. Pinnacle teaches nada on high altitude recovery or aerodynamics, which is probably how 3701 got in core lock. They recovered exactly how they were taught. Too bad you don't have the excess thrust at FL410 you do at 10,000 ft, and you're wasting your time. High altitude recovery is pretty much the same as the 172. Put the nose over and get airspeed back. Your gonna lose a lot more altitude compared to the low altitude stall.

 

[jtrain609]

Okay, this is where I get all "gruff".

Here's the deal. I'm all about making everyone better, and training to improve and all that.

At the end of the day, if you are unable to discern a high altitude stall from a low altitude stall, you shouldn't be flying me around.

Spare me from the "workload" argument. If any stall warning goes off, and you are unable to drop what you're doing and fly the airplane, you shouldn't be flying me around.

Save the "in an Emergency" argument. In an emergency, in a two pilot plane, one should fly (sans the momentary confirmation to make sure your flying partner doesn't shut down a good motor) and only fly.

I've trained approaches to stalls (because, really, isn't that what the discussion seems to be about with all this talk of the shaker - and the plane isn't stalled at that point) in aircraft from weights of a couple thousand pounds to over 800,000 lbs. If you properly execute an approach to a stall and recover at the first indication, the transport aircraft all preform the same.

No doubt, and I don't disagree with anything you've said, but what if you don't perform the maneuver correctly?

There's the possibility, and we're going to find out about this soon, that the captain completely botched the approach to stall recovery and put the aircraft into a full stall, with a possible half turn thrown in for good measure. That's one heck of a mistake to make while close to the ground, and if he had allowed the pusher to do exactly what it's supposed to do, push the nose down so you DON'T end up in a full stall, then they might have lost some altitude and flown out eh?

Obviously conjecture at this point, but the "hearings" (read as: "we're gonna hang the pilots out to dry on CNN) start on Tuesday, so we should know a little more than.

 

[TUCKnTRUCK]

Overscheduling

From that article, it sounds like they are trying to link what seems to be unrelated stuff.

It really seems like the company and the FAA are in a pissing match with the pilots stuck in between. We have been using the same duty and rest requirements as nearly every other airline out there. Suddenly, it no longer applies to "us" a big one being that legal to start legal to finish is now being interrepted on a leg by leg basis. Even with no changes to our schedule, if you last leg will put you over 8 hours knowingly, you get pulled off. But if you push, and then get a long GS your ok etc. Apparently, 24 in 7 is actually 1 calander day in 7 now... so you need a midnight to midnight window off. I have no idea if this has changed or not... but it seems like you get to find out via trial by error.

All the FAA has done here at colgan is confuse the pilots. They are handing out LOI's for stuff that is withen SOP's, changing the rules, and pretty much busting on people for whatever they want. Nobody here knows whats going on, so everybody is just trying to protect their ticket. It sucks, and I wish in they day of congressional hearings for baseball players etc... that maybe somebody would come look in on the FAA and how badly they are handeling this situation. I am really supprised we're not starting to see a lot of "jumpseat" MEL's...:whatever:

 

[BobDDuck]

I'd heard from a little birdy that they were going after people who flew over 8 hours, even if their original schedule was for less than 8. That's crazy. I mean, I'd love for that to be the official interpretation, but every other airline I know of (including where I'm at) uses legal to start, legal to finish, meaning it's entirly possible to fly 9 or 10 hours in a single day.

I hadn't heard about the 24 hours off having to be a calendar day. That's actually in our contract, but I was pretty certain the FARs said you had to have a 24 hour period off within a 7 day period.

Interesting that one FSDO seems be being going all Rambo on you guys.

 

[jynxyjoe]

NOTAM: if you believe in "word of mouth" or rumormongering then and only then the following can be taken as truth.

FAA has had it in for Colgan for years. It started many moons ago, before my time, and has continued after I left. I've been told by some CJC operations people, out of Houston, that it's because CJC is so close to the feds in Manassas. Others say it has started with an accident in Hyannis where one of our guys, on a ferry flight, put the old PT6 into beta in flight after the 4th attempt and crashed it (full of non-revers!). Others say the way the Q stuff started off made the FAA put CJC at the top of it's hit list. Others say it's political retribution because of some Virginia politics. Who knows.

Whatever the case, if rules are being changed I'd be printing those out and keep them in my flight case. If you need to delay a flight because ur not sure, then that is the way it is. This is normally where I'd say "fraternally yours, Fly safe Fly the contract". Right now it sounds like the FAA is dictating everything so nod your head and say "yes sir, yes sir, three bags full!".

Good luck guys.

 

[TUCKnTRUCK]

NOTAM: if you believe in "word of mouth" or rumormongering then and only then the following can be taken as truth.

FAA has had it in for Colgan for years. It started many moons ago, before my time, and has continued after I left.

Whatever the case, if rules are being changed I'd be printing those out and keep them in my flight case. If you need to delay a flight because ur not sure, then that is the way it is. This is normally where I'd say "fraternally yours, Fly safe Fly the contract". Right now it sounds like the FAA is dictating everything so nod your head and say "yes sir, yes sir, three bags full!".

Good luck guys.

Thats just the thing.. guys are getting violated for whats in the FOP, which is, afteral an FAA approved document, and from what I have heard, some guys are getting the, "everything was safe see ya", from the FAA, who then writes a letter in about something he/she didn't like.... resulting in "vacation" time. Everybody is on eggshells here. Pilots refusing to fly until they have clarification - people getting pulled off their pairing when they hit 5-6 hours (means all the reserves are getting used) so suddenly we have gone from overstaffed to desperately short etc.

99% of us would be happy to comply with what the FAA wants, and we have no problem with that... it's just the shady, backstabbing way they go about it right now. If they are pissed at the company, fine, go after them. Not the guys and girls trying to get people from A to B safely.

Kinda like.. if they came in and said, guys, no more legal to start, legal to finish... I would be happy, but to tell us with 16 LOI's? B.s

 

[EDUC8-or]

Question for you -- how much altitude does a transport category aircraft lose during a stall? I'm curious, because the Colgan crash involved a plane that was at a low altitude.

You can recover from a stall in a 172 in 100 feet. I'm sure it takes a lot more altitude to do it in a transport category aircraft.

We teach low and high altitude stalls, I'm kind of surprised other companies don't spend more time addressing high altitude aerodynamics and flight characteristics. Generally, the stalls at "low" altitudes (probably around 10,000' or less) involve more configuration changes and turns. The stalls we do up in the flight levels involve no configuration changes, AKA a clean stall. Part of our curriculum for initial and upgrade involves taking the airplane up to the high 30's and getting slow, so slow the airplane starts to buffet and eventually hits the shaker. It's just about impossible to recover without losing several thousand feet. The airplane will simply not accelerate, even with max power, without descending. It's a real eye opener and shows why you don't want to get slow in the CRJ.

 

[aevfo]

Per the "approach to stall," as Polar mentioned, if you fly by the profile and recover at the first indication (shaker,) you can get by in the CRJ with not losing ANY altitude. At least that's the sim. Never tried it in the real plane. A full stall with the shaker and the pusher, you're gonna lose 100-200 ft. Depends on how deep you get the pusher. That's all low altitude stuff. Pinnacle teaches nada on high altitude recovery or aerodynamics, which is probably how 3701 got in core lock. They recovered exactly how they were taught. Too bad you don't have the excess thrust at FL410 you do at 10,000 ft, and you're wasting your time. High altitude recovery is pretty much the same as the 172. Put the nose over and get airspeed back. Your gonna lose a lot more altitude compared to the low altitude stall.

I don't think it was quite how they were taught. Unless you weren't taught to follow the QRH and desend at the appropriate speed for relight, or don't admit to ATC double engine failure until almost 10000 ft.

 

[zmiller4]

I don't think it was quite how they were taught. Unless you weren't taught to follow the QRH and desend at the appropriate speed for relight, or don't admit to ATC double engine failure until almost 10000 ft.

I think he was talking simply about stall recovery, not dual flameout-core lock procedures.