Pilot Experience Eyed In Flight 3407 Probe

Experts Say Regional Airline Pilots Lack The Volume Of Hours In Cockpit Of Counterparts At Major Airlines

(CBS/AP)  As investigators continue to gather clues into the deadly crash of Flight 3407, some experts say pilot experience may have been a factor.

Capt. Marvin D. Renslow finished training on a Dash 8 just two months ago, reports the Buffalo News. He had amassed 110 hours in the turboprop's cockpit, logging the bulk of his 3,379 total flight hours on the much smaller Saab twin-engine turboprop. First officer Rebecca Lynne Shaw had around 770 hours flying the Dash 8 and 2,244 total hours.

By comparison, Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, who successfully landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River last month, had around 20,000 hours in the cockpit.

"As a general rule, the experience level in regional airlines is about a tenth of the experience level in major airlines," Douglas M. Moss, an airline pilot with more than 30,000 flight hours and president of AeroPacific Consulting of Torrance, Calif., told the Buffalo News.

"There's a huge experience disparity. It should raise the eyebrows of a lot of people."

While Moss doesn't fault either of the pilots for the crash, he notes that regional commuter airline captains, who work long hours for modest pay, simply don't have the wealth of experience to draw upon when emergencies arise.

"In reading hundreds of accident reports, the more experience the pilot has, the more able he is to handle the unique situations of any emergency," Moss said.

"That is one advantage of flying a major airline: You have tremendously more experience. The bag of resources a crew has is much larger. In the Hudson, Capt. Sullenberger wasn't using procedures that are written somewhere. There's no training for what he did. It's all just experience."

The type of aircraft is also a likely factor, as most ice-related accidents in involve turboprop planes, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes from Washington.

Former Federal Aviation Administration chief investigator Steven Wallace says propeller planes, even large ones like the one that crashed near Buffalo, are far more susceptible to ice buildup than jets.

"Jetliners, one, they tend to climb up and down through the altitudes faster and icing only occurs in a 10 to 15 degree centigrade span," Wallace says. "And one difference with a big jet airliner, they typically have heated wings. They bleed air off the engines to heat the wings."

Turboprops, on the other hand, tend to have inflatable devices called boots mounted on the edges of the wings to knock ice off.

After two deadly turboprop crashes in 1994 and 1997, the FAA ordered flight crews to activate the boots at the first sign of ice accumulation, and prohibited propeller planes from functioning on autopilot in severe icing conditions.

But the NTSB, which investigates crashes, has long called for more stringent testing of turboprops and restrictions for flying in icy conditions.

"The pace of the FAA's activities ... remains unacceptably slow," according to an NTSB warning just four months ago.

National Transportation Safety Board member Steve Chealander said investigators already have collected about half the crash debris and want to finish by Wednesday, when a snowstorm is expected to hit the area and hamper the cleanup.

After a seemingly routine flight, the Dash 8 Q400 turboprop plane, operated by Colgan Air, endured a 26-second plunge before smashing into a house about six miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport. The crash killed all 49 people on the plane and one on the ground.

Though ice has emerged as a possible contributor to the crash, Chealander has not ruled out other possibilities, including other aerodynamic or weight issues that could have made the aircraft uncontrollable.

The crash occurred so quickly and so violently - pitching and rolling the plane almost onto its back at one point and making it plunge 800 feet in just five seconds - that the pilot didn't have time to radio for help. So far, investigators have not found any mechanical problems with the aircraft, and they already have ruled out some causes of previous crashes, such as the loss of a propeller blade.

However, Chealander said investigators will research previous accidents and look for similarities.

On Monday, victims' relatives visited the crash site for the first time and placed red roses on a makeshift fence surrounding it and on the ground.

The site of the house on a quiet, tree-lined street in a middle-class neighborhood is now an almost empty dirt lot. All that is left are a garage with a scorched door, a basketball hoop, four steps leading to nowhere, a mailbox and the plane's enormous tail.

The two closest homes, each no more than two feet from the lot, appear almost untouched.

A tractor lifted the engine's burnt frame, pieces of dirt and charred metal hanging from it, from the lot Monday and put it aside to be investigated. Experts who helped identify victims from Flight 93's crash in a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001, joined the search for remains.

[135pilot]

The sad thing is that the 50 deaths from this accident will not result in any safety improvements until the FAA and 121 airlines begin to address pilot fatigue, low pay and poor quality of life that are faced daily by regional airline pilots.

Next time you get a deal on cheap tickets keep in mind it may not be a good deal if you want to stay alive. Please stop attacking these pilots. They were put in a terrible situation with poor training and a lack of rest. No level of experience will help with fatigue

[wgr13068]

I believe there is something people are overlooking. According to the flight data recorder info...the plane was on straight and level flight...at altitude...and the engines were running fine! They KNEW they had icing and the deicers were on. Normally...when Flaps are applied in preparation for landing, that event INcreases lift for the slower speeds involved. In this case...that is when they trouble occurred. I believe they will find there is/was something wrong with the plane mechanically because applying flaps wouldn't cause loss of control like that and they had control just prior to then. I hope they don't just blame the pilots and will find the real cause.

[graybeard333]

Learman3 is right. Apparently the general public does not think that the concept of ''you get what you pay for'' applies to aviation. How many experienced pilots do you suppose are applying to these regional carriers when the starting pay is 20-30K per year? I''m not saying that regional pilots are unsafe--it''s just that you''re rolling the dice when you board one of these aircraft. With current hiring standards as low as they are, you might very well have someone with only a few hundred hours (in light singles no less) up front flying you to Cleveland. Can they get your from point-A to point-B on a nice day? Usually. Will they perform well when things start going wrong? Sure hope so. You bet your life on it every time you fly a regional.

[graybeard333]

Learman3 is right. Apparently the general public does not think that the concept of ''you get what you pay for'' applies to aviation. How many experienced pilots do you suppose are applying to these regional carriers when the starting pay is 20-30K per year? I''m not saying that regional pilots are unsafe--it''s just that you''re rolling the dice when you board one of these aircraft. With current hiring standards as low as they are, you might very well have someone with only a few hundred hours (in light singles no less) up front flying you to Cleveland. Can they get your from point-A to point-B on a nice day? Usually. Will they perform well when things start going wrong? Sure hope so. You bet your life on it every time you fly a regional.

[learman3]

To me that crew was seasoned compared to what other regional airlines were hiring pilots with 6 or more months ago. Comair, skywest airlines, mesa airlines, trans states airlines and a few more were hiring pilots with only 250hrs. once they went to a airline training academy and paid for the training. I am sorry you cant trade money for experience and it show. I will never ever ride on a regional nor allow any of my family to do so either. Having a experienced in the cockpit in a emergency greatly increases yours risk of survival. I am a pilot myseld with several thousand hours and I am sad that this happend to 3407, but the FAA has got to step up and not allow untrained crews and these airlines to continue to hire pilots with as we say; if you have a pulse we will hire you, make the minimums of flight time higher.

[skyehigh-2009]

Please NOTE: the comment added from The Aviation Herald is very much edited to get it in the 1500 word limit, So excuse the choppy sentences.

also the U 2026 was supposed to be three periods in a row like this ( ... )

That flight had very similar wing and pitch movements, see the actual report for the complete details. SkyeHigh

[skyehigh-2009]

From "The Aviation Herald" avherald.com
By Simon Hradecky,Feb 18th 2009

A Coast Air ATR-42 was climbing in icing conditions when %u2026The side window iced up, while the rubber boots appeared to keep the leading edges of the wing free of ice.

At FL120 the airplane''s climb performance began the significantly deteriorate. Nearing FL140 the climb%u2026 sufficient margins 7 knots above icing speed.

When the airplane reached FL140, it began to descend a bit again. Just when the first officer wanted to disconnect the autopilot, the stickshaker activated and the autopilot disengaged by itsself. The aileron mistrim light came on, about one or two seconds thereafter the airplane rolled uncommanded to the right by 45 degrees and the nose dropped to about 7-8 degrees below the horizon. The first officer applied full thrust and pushed the stick forward and struggled to rectify the bank angle, the airplane rolled to a left bank before it straightened up. The crew figured they had lost just more than 1000 feet, radar data showed they had dropped from 14400 to 12900 feet%u2026 the left wing dropped uncommanded almost as violently as in the first upset. The first officer applied a similiar recovery as in the first upset and managed to stabilize the airplane again.The airplane was now flying between two layers of clouds and the icing had stopped....

[mcapek]

I speak from personal experience, my brother died in an IFR accident over Grand Canyon, with unforecast severe thunderstorms all over the place, and Denver Center unwittingly assigning a flight path through them. Shortly after my brother declared he is deviating for weather, his plane went into a spiral dive from 21,000 feet. NTSB could not find any problems with the pilot (they do things like autopsy looking for alcohol, drugs, scrutinize medical background, flight currency, training and performance of the pilot, log books for the airframe, engine, propeller, examine in detail the wreckage, etc.) Their conclusion: probable pilot incapacitation due to a severe weather, contributing factor: pilot did not get a weather update en route (even though he did a weather brief before starting the flight 2 hours earlier). No mention whatsover was made by NTSB of a glaring inadequacy of the air control system, where the IFR controlling agency doesn''t have a clue if there is a tornado, level 6 thunderstom, or a nuclear bomb explosion in the pilots way. They just assign a flight level and heading, and the pilot has to take care of everything else, i.e. flying, navigating, communicating and being his own realtime weather service. I think NTSB and FAA do extremely valuable service, but they are not God, error free, or unbiased.

[mcapek]

We simply don''t have enough data to decide whether the crew did something wrong, or whether they were dealt a very bad card (excessive and rapid ice accumulation flying in the soup, flap or other equipment malfunction, inappropriate contorl input). Maybe NTSB will come up with a definitive cause of exactly what happened, maybe not. But it appears that what often happens, NTSB assigns at least a partial blame for the fatal accident to pilots, and of course dead pilots aren''t around to dispute their decision. So we may never know.

[ariz_1944]

joule18, please learn what you are talking about before you post nonsense. The bladders on the deicing equipment inflate and deflate every 30 to 60 sec.

[Gorevidal]

What I found slightly odd is that most news organizations were reporting that the pilot had 3,000 hrs of experience and the co-pilot had around 1,500 with emphasis that 3,000 hrs is a lot of time.

It reminded me of a segment recently on Charlie Rose where Malcom Gladwell talked about his new book where he asserts that 10,000 hrs of experience equates a professional or an expert in some area. I tend to agree.

[joule18]

If the de-icing equipment was on for most of the flight, the ice would have built up on the inflated baffles. It seems it should have been turned off and on again periodically so inflation could have gotten rid of the ice instead of leaving it on for the ice to build up on it without recourse.

[toolmangler-2009]

Even at the best glide speed, the plane would never make it to airport 8 miles out, probably not even 2 or 3 miles.
Posted by mcapek at 08:01 PM : Feb 17, 2009




If the Airbus has a 5 to 1 glide ratio, I will be surprised. It would have needed a 8 to 1 G/R and one mile in heigth to make Teterboro 8 miles away.

[mcapek]

"you STILL have a 170,000 lb glider NOT on a normal approach to ANY airport and at about 1500 feet. Teterboro is about 8 miles from where the plane ended up in the Hudson"

I would be shocked if a large commercial plane could glide 8 miles, starting at mere 1500 foot altitude (assuming this piece of altitude info is correct), with zero engine trust. I suspect the plane would loose the altitude very quickly (1500 feet is NOTHING, that is a traffic pattern height for small planes around an airport, you are practically on the ground already). Even at the best glide speed, the plane would never make it to airport 8 miles out, probably not even 2 or 3 miles.

Its another story if you start at 30,000 feet, then you have a lot of gliding range.

[joepack61]

cargo shift, causing the plane to be incredibly hard to control.
--- Posted by mahdeealoo at 06:22 PM : Feb 17, 2009

Nice try, but this is a big fat hypothetical. Cargo weight and balance on commercial flights is handled by professionals with advanced equipment. It''s not even close to flying a Cessna. Passengers had to be belted in seats 30 minutes befored landing, and if weight shifting existed, it would have been noticed at take-off and during the flight, but was not reported by the pilots. Maybe a crate of zoo animals busted loose and a rhinocerous ran to the cockpit to talk to the pilot.

[joepack61]

I agree with yongamerica that the pilots should have got out of dodge. In another report, I heard that the pilots were discussing the fact of observed icing on the windshield. Ice on the WINDSHIELD. Another article suggested that the pilots had the plane on auto pilot in icing conditions (hard to ignore when ice is on your freakin windscreen) in violation of procedure. My conclusion is they lost control when they disengaged the autopilot. As an aside, the copilot''s dialogue in the radio comm was nearly inaudible. It sounded like she was half-asleep or worse.

[mahdeealoo]

The pitching and rolling of flight 3407 may have begun fatal, continual cargo shift, causing the plane to be incredibly hard to control. I''ve had the experience as a pilot in a two seater that even an improperly placed suitcase can effect the airplane performance during takeoff, landing, and air travel. Balance of cargo is crucial to aerodynamic function.

[joepack61]

Thank goodness we have both the NTSB and FAA looking into this. The articles suggest that without NTSB, planes would be falling from the skies like bird droppings. Maybe we should make sure that two govt. agencies are looking into everything. The peanut butter hearings in the Senate revealed that the Department of Agriculture has a better record inspecting meat factories than the FDA does inspecting peanut butter. So, let''s sic the Dept. of Ag. on the peanut butter factories too. It raises the age-old question (Rome?): who will watch the watchers?

[joepack61]

It''''s ghoulish and nasty.
--- Posted by jimmyc1955 at 03:34 PM : Feb 17, 2009

All of this discussion has been about the failures of government - mainly the FAA not following NTSB cutting edge recommendations -- and the travel industry to insure the public safety. Grow a backbone and a pair, and save the excellent Don Henely quote for a valid example of shameless journalism.

[yongamerica]

btheboss1 is a bloody spam monster.

Why don''t you repost another dozen times so we can ignore you that much more.