Airlines, FAA Faulted For Poor Training

(CBS/AP)  A former Transportation Department official said both the airline and Federal Aviation Administration requirements are to blame for the poor training of a pilot whose commuter plane crashed February 12, killing 50 people.

The charges come the same day the National Transportation Safety Board begins a three-day public hearing on the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 that killed all 49 people on board and one on the ground in Buffalo, New York.

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Transcript of cockpit conversation on Colgan Air Flight 3407, which crashed in Buffalo, N.Y.

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Safety investigators were told the pilot in the worst U.S. air crash in more than seven years had trouble learning a critical computer system of the plane he was flying.

National Transportation Safety Board records released Tuesday say investigators were told by one training instructor that Flight 3407's captain "was slow learning" the Dash 8-Q400 Bombardier, a twin-engine turboprop. But it said that pilot Marvin Renslow's abilities "picked up at the end."

CBS News Correspondent Nancy Cordes reports that investigators are looking specifically at the quality of the training Renslow had, and whether with better training, the crash might have been prevented.

They will examine what has been the central mystery of the accident: Why did the captain yank up on the control column after receiving warning of an imminent stall, when pilots are trained to do just the opposite?

Colgan confirms the 47-year-old captain had failed test flights called "check rides" five times - twice during his tenure at the airline, and three times before he was hired. But Cordes reports that Colgan Air claims its pilot training regimen was examined and approved by the FAA.

On CBS' The Early Show, Mary Schiavo, Inspector General of the Department of Transportation during the first Bush and Clinton administrations, said both the airlines and the FAA are to blame for inadequate pilot training.

"It's the fault, of course, of the airline, because they say, 'Look, we met our training, we met our requirements with the FAA,'" Schiavo said to Early Show anchor Julie Chen. "But they have to understand, and everyone needs to understand, the FAA trainings are minimum."

Colgan said Renslow's training on the stall warning system was limited to the classroom and did not involve a simulator.

"To learn about the stall procedures and the stick shaker from classroom exercises, and not experience either in the aircraft, and not even in the simulator, is inexcusable," said Schiavo. "That's a basic part of training.

"In my flight training I think you get that on maybe the second or third day in the airplane. I think that's a big problem with their training, and the fault of both the airline and the FAA requirements."

Former NTSB Member John Goglia also told CBS News, "To just read it out of a book and just talk about it is not very good training.

"It's very disappointing to find this stuff out."

Schiavo said that, unfortunately, there are other commercial pilots today who are insufficiently trained: "Oh, absolutely, that's a real problem in the regional carrier industry. In fact, of all the regional crashes in this century, in the last decade, there were eight, and in seven of the eight, the NTSB faulted the pilot training and the pilot performance in the cockpit."

She said that was real problem that needed to be addressed by the carriers and the FAA that is supposed to oversee them.

Sue Pash, who lost her sister, Mary Pettys, on Flight 3407, said on The Early Show that to hear about the issue of inadequate pilot training was "Devastating, absolutely devastating.

"I have to get back on a flight to go home on Friday," Pash said. "And I don't want to do it because I'm not sure of the credentials of the pilot that's going to be, you know, flying this plane."

(CBS)

Left: Mary Pettys, of West Seneca, N.Y., was a software director for an insurance firm heading home on Flight 3407 after a business trip. Her family said she was the sister who did everything for everyone without giving it a second thought, putting everyone's needs before her own. She was planning her spring wedding.

Schiavo, whose 1997 book "Flying Blind, Flying Safe" warned of the dangers of flying due to problems facing the airline industry, was asked if there is a way that passengers can check the credentials or experience of the pilot on a commercial flight.

"No," she replied. "If you can find your names, of course, there is a pilot database of who's a licensed pilot and that is available on the FAA Web site and their databases, but you can't get the training records. The airlines are supposed to have the training records, of course, for everyone's career in aviation. There's federal regulation that says your record must go with you. But the airlines don't have to tell you."

Pash was asked what she would like to see happen as a result of the NTSB hearings into Flight 3407.

She hoped for tighter regulations that would require the FAA to "yank every single pilot [who] has failed a test, you know, away from the controls of an airplane and put them back through training."

Schiavo thinks the NTSB investigators will be very hard on the FAA. "After all, there have been many recommendations pending for as long as 10 or 15 years, that the FAA has failed to act on. And so they will inquire why the FAA hasn't acted on their previous recommendations, why they don't make it clear that their requirements are only minimums, and carriers should go above and beyond the bare government minimums - and also what about the training, in this particular aircraft, as well."

(AP)

She said they will also examine the design of the aircraft, a 74-seat Q400 turboprop built by Bombardier (like the one pictured left), and its performance in icing conditions, as well as pilot training for those conditions.

The Bombardier that crashed in Buffalo was almost new.

The Dash-8 model had a strong safety record, with no fatal crashes in the U.S., although there were three accidents in Sweden in 2007 involving collapsed landing gear.


For more info:

NTSB Public Hearings Into Colgan Air Flight 3407, May 12-14: Information and Agenda (Hearings will be Webcast on ntsb.gov site)

Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript Of Flight 3407 (pdf)

Preliminary Report on Colgan Air Flight 3407 (NTSB Accident Database)

FAA Registry: Airmen Certification Inquiry

[roach9703]

Colgan airlines should be SUED!
These are the same geniuses who allowed all the 911 people to board in Maine ( remember?).

[truthseeker60]

This is sad, and frighting. To be trained only in the classroom, but not on a simulater ought to be illegal. It's human lives the trainers are playing with. And if multiple tests are failed, that ought to be a red flag to the airline.
Posted by snoopy28173 at 9:54 AM : May 12, 2009

What's really sad and frighting is that people like you believe all this BS by the Media. Pilots must be certified by the FAA. These reports are smoke screens to avoid people from asking the truth about what the black box revealed. It wasnt ICE, it wasnt pilot error, it wasnt mechanical failure. Ask the right questions to avoid the snow jobs.

[snoopy28173]

This is sad, and frighting. To be trained only in the classroom, but not on a simulater ought to be illegal. It's human lives the trainers are playing with. And if multiple tests are failed, that ought to be a red flag to the airline.

[DefendLiberty]

Why is the transcript PDF link broken? I guess the public "really does not need to know". Want to bet the government yanked it?

[truthseeker60]

Wd have yet to be told the results of the Black Box as what happened. All we hear is ICE, Pilot didnt know emerg proceedures, and now "poor training'. How about someone sabotaged the aircraft!! Any investigation into lthat? No, just media snow jobs. Wheres OJ when they need him?

[flolake]

If anyone cared to go back and do the research, I suspect that in addition to being a less than adequate pilot, he likely was dyslexic as well. That would help explain why he yanked the nose up when in fact he should have lowered the nose...