Pilot Fatigue Examined At Crash Hearing

(CBS/AP)  The co-pilot in a February airline crash that killed 50 people in upstate New York was paid a salary so low that she was living with her parents in the West Coast city of Seattle and commuting across the U.S. to her job, according to testimony Wednesday.

The accident was the worst U.S. airline crash in seven years.

One of the safety issues that has arisen in the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation is whether co-pilot Rebecca Shaw and Capt. Marvin Renslow may have suffered from fatigue during the accident. Testimony in the three-day hearing, which began Tuesday, indicates Shaw and Renslow made several fundamental mistakes as Continental Connection Flight 3407 approached Buffalo Niagara International Airport in wintry weather the night of Feb. 12.

Airline officials acknowledged at the hearing that Shaw, 24, was paid at a rate of about $23 an hour. They did not dispute an NTSB investigator who said she made $16,254 a year, although she could have earned more if she worked extra hours.

Shaw worked for the airline — Colgan Air Inc. , which operated the flight for Continental — for a little more than a year and worked a second job in a coffee shop when she was first hired.

The night before the accident, Shaw flew overnight as a passenger from Seattle to report to work at Newark Liberty International Airport on the East Coast. Shaw also complained about congestion and may have been suffering from a cold.

Roger Cox, NTSB's aviation safety operations group chairman, suggested while questioning officials for Colgan that Shaw was commuting because she couldn't afford to live in the New York metropolitan area.

Mary Finnegan, Colgan's vice president of administration, said the company permits pilots to live anywhere in the U.S. they wish. She said the company also allows them to remove themselves from flight duty if they are fatigued.

"It is their responsibility to commute in and be fit for duty," Finnegan said.

Renslow commuted to Newark from his home near Tampa, Florida. Colgan officials said their captains typically have salaries around 55,000 a year.

NTSB investigators said 93 of the 137 Colgan pilots who work out of Newark commute by air to work. The company maintains a crew room at the airport with couches, overstuffed chairs and a big screen TV. Board members said Shaw frequently slept overnight in the crew room in violation of company policy, joking with other crew members that the room had a couch with her name on it.

Colgan officials said overnight sleeping was not allowed in the room because it was a busy place, making quality rest time difficult.

Colgan "looked the other way. I think it's a disgrace, it's despicable," said Pam Weldon, a family friend of a passenger killed in the crash. "They called it 'napping.' They knew it was sleeping."

A transcript of the cockpit voice recorder released Tuesday by the board showed Renslow and Shaw engaging in chitchat about careers and her lack of experience flying in icy conditions during the plane's final minutes, even after they had noticed a buildup of ice on the windshield and the wings.

The Dash 8-Q400 Bombardier, a twin-engine turboprop, experienced an aerodynamic stall, rolling back and forth before plunging into a house below. All 49 people aboard and one on the ground were killed.

Colgan officials acknowledged in response to board members' questions that Renslow and Shaw were not paying close attention to the plane's instruments and were surprised by a stall warning. Nor did they follow the airline's procedures for responding to a stall.

Further testimony and documents also showed that Renslow had failed several training tests before and after being hired by Colgan in 2005. He had been certified to fly the Dash-8 plane for about three months.

Paul Pryor, Colgan's head of pilot training, acknowledged that Renslow did not have any hands-on training on the Dash 8's stick pusher — a key safety system that automatically kicks on in response to a stall — although he had received hands-on stick pusher training on a smaller plane that he previously flew.

Michael Goldfarb, the Federal Aviation Administration's former chief of staff, said training problems were "systemic" in the industry.

"Are we as safe as we ought to be on regional jets? No, we are not," Goldfarb told CBS' The Early Show.

[weedapoopl]

Count the seconds the crew had to recognize the problem, select the proper response, and then act on it. The NTSB has had three months to look at the information they have. Now their job is to put all the pieces together.
Posted by Skysteve07 at 5:17 PM : May 13, 2009

The airplane snap rolled five times, each time in an opposite direction.

The first snap roll was to the left, the standard wing drop in an ordinary stall.

There was no nose drop whatsoever.

There were no unusual forces on the yoke, such as the pilot holding 80 pounds of pressure just to keep the nose up.

The pilot was totall incompetent if he suspected a tail stall with absolutely ZERO evidence of one.

But even if he did, the first snap roll should have suggested that he should try the normal recovery.

After the second or third snap roll, it should have dawned on him to stop trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result (the definition of insanity).

I don't know how many snap rolls you've done in your career. But you get plenty of inspiration to think REAL FAST when you get five uncommaded snap rolls in quick succession on final approach.

It should get you thinking, maybe you're doing something wrong.

Like hugging the yoke while the airplane is doing snap rolls.

It's a tribute to the robust design of the airplane that he didn't hit the ground inverted.

He was sure doing his best to accomplish that.

If you were an expert witness on the witness stand, I'd eat you for lunch.

[Skysteve07]

The silly comments are not needed or useful to anyone, and they are of no interest in any discussion of this nature or in this tragic accident.

I never said the problem was likely a tailplane stall. I said that the crew probably believed they were in one. Obviously, they weren't. If the stickshaker was their first indication of an impending stall, or at least the first indication to which they responded, then their response makes sense. That's part of what the investigators need to consider. Why did the crew respond the way they did? Was it inadequate training? Probably. Did fatigue play a role? Probably. After many hours of training and practice, did the captain know how to respond to a normal stall? Probably. As with nearly any accident like this, this accident is the culmination of many things that went wrong, which would include what the pilots thought they were experiencing. Bear in mind that the crew was flying at night, in relatively modest icing conditions (although an impulse of particularly wet weather went through the area right about the time they started the approach), in an airplane in which they had relatively little experience, and were probably somewhat fatigued. In addition, they did not have actual or simulated training in the operation of the stickshaker. Had any one of these conditions not been in place, the accident probably would not have occurred. Conversely, all these things had to come together at once to cause this accident.

Count the seconds the crew had to recognize the problem, select the proper response, and then act on it. The NTSB has had three months to look at the information they have. Now their job is to put all the pieces together.

[weedapoopl]

To put it another way - if this "virtuoso" pilot thought it was a tail stall, then his superb knowledge of aerodynamics should have told him after the first two or three snap rolls that maybe it's a conventional wing stall after all, and he should try a normal recovery.

Instead, he kept trying the same bogus control response over and over until he hit the ground.

Ya, he's a real flyin' Einstein.

Except he's dead. And he had plenty of chances to figure things out on the way down.

[weedapoopl]

Check out the NASA video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2238323060735779946. Scary, huh?
Posted by Skysteve07 at 3:45 PM : May 13, 2009

LOL! Funny show.

I love the punchline: "Remember, in a crash, the cockpit hits the ground first."

Who says the FAA doesn't have a sense of humor?

In the video of the actual tailplane stall, notice that there was NO wing drop on either side. The wings stayed level while the nose dropped sharply.

And ya, the pilot knew something was wrong because he was holding 80 pounds of pressure on the yoke just to keep the nose up, even before the stall.

Like I said, the exact opposite happened in this crash. The nose did not drop, and a wing dropped sharply when the pilot hauled the nose up 30 degrees above the horizon.

It sounds like a few ignorant know-it-alls are posting nonsense about an extremely obscure phenomenon, when there is no evidence that's what happened in this crash.

Or maybe it's just the same ignorant know-it-all posting under multiple screen names.

If the wing drops, it's not a tail stall.

[weedapoopl]

which means that the horizontal stabilizer quits flying and produces an elevator buffet and a quick nose-down pitch
Posted by Skysteve07 at 3:45 PM : May 13, 2009

The nose did not pitch down. As soon as the stick shaker activated, the pilot immediately pulled the nose up to 30 degrees above the horizon, after which the airplane dropped the left wing sharply.

If the pilot had any thought of a tailplane stall, they should have ended at that moment.

And any pilot who can't tell the difference between a stick shaker and buffeting is an incompetent boob anyway.

If you really are a commercial pilot, you probably went to the same flying school as this nincompoop did.

My advice to you is - go rent some time in a Piper Cub with an instructor, and learn to FLY.

[weedapoopl]

Posted by Skysteve07 at 3:45 PM : May 13, 2009

Bull.

If it was a tailplane stall, why was the airplane snap rolling to wings vertical, both left and right?

The pilot control inputs shown by the NTSB animation show a totally incompetent pilot making control inputs that are inconsistent with either a tailplane stall or a conventional stall.

He was using both aileron and rudder to pick up the low wing - a no-no.

Then in the last snap roll, he stopped using rudder and corrected with aileron only.

All the time, he was holding the nose 20 degrees above the horizon. Is that the proper response to a tailplane stall?

Pardon me, sir, but I see no record that you purchased a paid shill license.

You can't post garbage like that around here without a license.

But this is your first offense, so I'll let you off with a warning this time.

[Skysteve07]

A lot of judgemental and unqualified people are posting here, who apparently have little or no clue about this topic. I'm a commercial pilot with a background in aviation safety, and when people start second-guessing flight crews, I need to look deeper into what happened and why.

The crew members were discussing icing potential just minutes before the crash. I'm quite sure the captain knew how to recover from a normal aerodynamic stall, but the fact that they had been discussing icing and had a buildup of ice on the windshield and wings probably (i.e., likely) convinced the captain that they had a situation known as a tailplane stall. In this condition, ice accumulates on the horizontal stabilizers (the "wings" on the tail of the aircraft), which can then stall. However, the elevators produce lift in a downward direction, which is opposite of the direction that lift is generated on the wings. Ice accumulation on the horizonal stabilizers and extending the flaps brings about a tailplane stall, which means that the horizontal stabilizer quits flying and produces an elevator buffet and a quick nose-down pitch, which is exactly what the stickshaker does as it tries to recover from a normal stall. The captain more than likely mistook the stickshaker for a buffeting tailplane and an impending tailplane stall. Pulling the nose up by exerting back-pressure on the yoke, returning the flaps to the previous setting, and reducing power are the correct responses to a tailplane stall.

In non-icing conditions, he probably would have responded to an impending stall the same way he was trained: lower the nose and add power. Note that these are the exact opposite responses from a tailplane stall. Check out the NASA video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2238323060735779946. Scary, huh? What would you have done? Both pilots did exactly the right thing, had their situation actually been a tailplane stall.

Before we all go off and blame the crew--because we need to blame someone--we need to get some more information and let the professional investigators do their jobs. Maybe the fault is with the manufacturer that the stickshaker response is the same as a tailplane stall. It's apparent that the stickshaker can cause a confusing response, especially if the crew didn't actually have actual or simulator training in the use of the stickshaker.

As for the comments about pay and the chitchat before the crash, yes, they should have concentrated fully on flying the aircraft and monitoring their airspeed. Regional pilots fly because they love the job, period. And because they love the job, they study flying with great diligence. What scares me most, is that I would have probably done the same thing they did, with no different results, had I truly thought the aircraft was experiencing a tailplane stall. I'm only thankful I wasn't in their shoes and given the same set of circumstances.

[weedapoopl]

So if she would have got paid more that would be important HOW???
Posted by madhose at 1:39 PM : May 13, 2009

Maybe if they paid their pilots better, they'd have BETTER PILOTS instead of the numbskull who crashed this plane.

And this now-dead pilot would be flipping burgers somewhere.

[jroach31]

The $23 an hour figure with no explanation is completely bogus. That figure represents the flight time rate. These pilots get paid NOTHING for preflight duties or anything else. Their pay clock is when the airplane moves-period.

Her REAL pay rate, calculated the way the rest of us get paid, was around $8.50 an hour. You can make more as a McDonalds fry cook.

[madhose]

So if she would have got paid more that would be important HOW??? ***. I think reporters should get an education before being able to publish something. 46 Grand a year living at home. B***S*** , "the amt she was paid" had nothing to do with the crash.