CO Buffalo Crash Pilot Flunked Tests, Never Properly Trained

[Matt Molnar]

WSJ:

Captain's Training Faulted In Air Crash That Killed 50
MAY 11, 2009

By ANDY PASZTOR

The captain of a commuter plane that crashed Feb. 12 near Buffalo, N.Y., had flunked numerous flight tests during his career and was never adequately taught how to respond to the emergency that led to the airplane's fatal descent, according to people close to the investigation.

All 49 people aboard were killed, as well as one person in a house below, when the plane crashed just a few miles short of the Buffalo airport en route from Newark, N.J. The Bombardier Q400 turboprop in the crash, which will be the subject of a National Transportation Safety Board hearing Tuesday, was operated by commuter carrier Colgan Air Inc., a division of Pinnacle Airlines Corp.

Capt. Marvin Renslow had never been properly trained by the company to respond to a warning system designed to prevent the plane from going into a stall, according to people familiar with the investigation. As the speed slowed to a dangerous level, setting off the stall-prevention system, he did the opposite of the proper procedure, which led to the crash, these people said.

Additionally, his 24-year-old co-pilot, Rebecca Shaw, had complained before takeoff about being congested and said she probably should have called in sick, according to people who have listened to the cockpit voice recording.

...

In recent weeks, Colgan's top two training officials resigned; Mr. Williams has said their decisions were voluntary and not connected to the accident. Darrell Mitchell, Colgan's departing director of training, is slated to testify at Tuesday's hearing.

[Full Article]

[LGA777]

Fascinatiing article, you really should read it all folks, sort of a smoking gun to operations at some regional airlines. Hopefully the FAA will increase training requirements at Regional airlines.

Regards

LGA777

[USAF Pilot 07]

Interesting report. I went through my primary phase of pilot training with a co-pilot on the ERJ (who had flown B1900s before) for a "major regional", and the stories he would tell about some of the stuff that went on - both on the management side and the pilot side were pretty crazy (everything from awful scheduling tactics to skirt around FAA regulations, to poor instruction, to incompetent pilots doing stupid stuff, to pilots flying hungover/drunk you name it...).

On the other side, hindsight is 20/20 and it is very easy to blame the pilot for what happened after the fact, or their actions leading up to the flight. Think about how many of us who fly have flown with a cold, or haven't felt great the day we were flying, or were tired - we try to mitigate it, but it happens.

Failing 6 checkrides, though, does sound somewhat shady. In this day of age though, with such a pilot surplus, and with technology that should easily be available to airline hiring committees, I would think it'd be kind of difficult to hide 6 checkride failures. There's always more to the story than what meets the eye...

I don't know how the civilian side trains, but one the biggest things we're exposed to from day 1 (even in the T-1 (Beechcraft400)) are recovery from "traffic pattern" stalls. We go out to our training areas (usually between 15K and 24K feet), configure, slow to approach speeds, and simulate turning and straight-ahead stalls at approach speeds for all flaps settings. Once we get the stall buffet or the stick shaker, the first thing is always to apply go-around procedures, release back pressure (i.e. lower the nose), roll wings level, and then try to max perform the aircraft at the best AoA without entering a secondary stall. I don't know much about airplanes, so I'd imagine it's tougher to do this flying a larger aircraft (i.e. you don't want to go take a B737 out and practice stalls), but maybe it's practiced it in the sim, or at least during the first few aircraft flown to build that habit pattern.

Not sure if the Q400 is equipped with a stick shaker, and I'm sure in ice things are "dicier", but I would imagine the last thing you want to do is firewall the throttles and keep raising the nose (without crosschecking your airspeed, VSI and AoA). Not second guessing the crew - it was night, in the wx, in ice, with a pretty new pilot - not a great situation to be in and unfortunate the incident turned out the way it did.