sushibear

I have a friend who does just that on every flight.

T/BE20/G

He would not have been fired for being unqualified; he would have been fired for lack of integrity as evidenced by his falsified application. Despite the failures about which he lied, the captain met all legal and company requirements for the position at the time he was hired as a first officer, and met the company and legal requirements for each position he help at the company during his tenure there. Straight from the horse's mouth, here are the requirements to be hired as a pilot at Colgan:
Note that there is no requirement that an applicant have passed every checkride on the first attempt... You may disagree with the policy, but the fact is that having failed a few checkrides does not make one unqualified to be an airline pilot. As in so many areas of life, a failed checkride is in fact an excellent learning opportunity, and the mistakes you make while sitting next to an examiner may stick with you for the rest of your career in such a way that you never make them again.

Steph3n

you all know that colgan=pinnacle = part of northwest/delta partners and ex owned(or otherwise exclusive) company right?
Also the q400 was a loss for DELTA, not for CO, the Pinnacle insurance coverage is backed by DL.

It is a tangled web these airlines.

T/BE20/G

As a pilot, I can say this:

It's certainly within your rights, as far as I'm concerned. I consider it to be a rediculous question, but I would gladly answer it if you asked. While I understand the concern behind the question, and I know that it makes people feel better to hear reassurances from the captain, it still boggles my mind how often people ask questions that imply that I'm willing to risk my life by operating a flight when I don't consider it safe to do so.

By the time you board a flight and ask me if the flight's safe, I've already determined that I consider it to be safe... If I didn't think it was, we wouldn't be boarding. If I thought I was not adequately rested to operate the flight, I wouldn't put my life at risk by operating it anyway. If I thought that the type of airplane we were in wasn't safe, I wouldn't be risking my life by flying it day after day. If I didn't think that the maintenance work that was just signed off was completed in a way that returned the airplane to a safe condition to fly, I wouldn't risk my life by accepting it. Pilots and flight attendants are exposed to the exact same risks that they expose their passengers to, so you can't really expect anything other than a positive answer when you make inquiries about the safety of the flight.

Of course, there are times that flights are operated unsafely, unfortunately. I can virtually guarantee you, though, that had you asked the pilots on those flights before departure whether the flight was unsafe, every one of them would have told you that it was perfectly safe, and they would have told you that not to shut you up, but because they truly believed it. Captain Renslow and First Officer Shaw didn't think that they were too tired to fly. They didn't think that they were unqualified. They didn't think that they were inadequately trained. They didn't think that the flight was unsafe, and they certainly didn't think that they were going to crash. If you had asked them any of those questions as you boarded, they would have reassured you of your safety. Sadly, in that tragic case, they would have been wrong, but they honestly believed that the flight was safe or they wouldn't have flown it.


The problem here is in FAA training requirements. For airline training programs, the FAA requires that pilots be trained to recover from a stall at the first indication, which in this aircraft is the stick shaker. To recover at the first indication of a stall actually means preventing a stall all together, as the stick shaker activates before the wing has actually stalled. Unfortunately, this training standard means that the FAA does not require a pilot to ever experience the stick pusher in the simulator, so this was almost certainly the first time Captain Renslow had ever experienced the sensations of the stick pusher. If you've never experienced something before, it may not be easy to identify it.

Think of anti-lock brake systems. If you've never experienced the automatic pumping action of ABS before, it's recommended that you do so in a controlled setting (like a parking lot) before you drive in the real world. From the NHTSA:This is because people who have never experienced the sensations of ABS don't know what to expect, and may not react properly when it activates. Similarly, if a pilot has never experienced the sensation, he may not react properly to it.

Ultimately, it's not the crew's fault that the had no prior experience with the stick pusher. Primarily, it's the FAA's fault because they choose not to require exposure to this vital safety equipment in training. That applies, of course, to mainline training as well as regional. Mainline pilots are not required to, and most probably never do, have exposure to the stick pusher, either. You could make an argument that this is also Colgan's fault, since they can (and now do) require exposure to the stick pusher that is above and beyond FAA training requirements. Unfortunately, a lack of first-hand familiarity with the stick pusher system does not make one unqualified in the eyes of the FAA, nor did it make one unqualified in the eyes of Colgan management at the time of the accident.

MikeMpls

A bit off the mark: Pinnacle is part of neither NW nor DL. The hull loss policy probably was purchased originally by NW to cover its CRJ's that are flown by Pinnacle and later extended by Pinnacle to cover Colgan aircraft. It's most unlikely that either NW or DL is on the hook for anything as a result of this accident.

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:...ient=firefox-a

http://www.bieurope.com/cgi-bin/arti...rticleId=27170

Steph3n

Pinnacle was made to feed NW, with an exclusive CPA, they were released to enable work for other airlines. They purchased Colgan several years ago to get access to CO and others to feed them.

Evan!

It "boggles your mind"? You aren't deities. People get behind the wheel of a car everyday after drinking alcohol risking others AND their own life. There have been cases in the news where pilots were found to have been under the influence and had to be pulled off a flight involuntarily. People often do not recognize their own limitations. That's why we have some laws... to protect us from each other but also to protect us from ourselves.

So you really shouldn't be "boggled" by someone thinking you MIGHT risk your own life. After all, you might not think there is a risk. Remember, the pax that asks that question doesn't know YOU so they don't have any basis to think you wouldn't climb in the cockpit under-rested.

Pharaoh

As a pilot myself:
Agree 100%. An FAA examiner once failed me because my performance on one emergency maneuver was, frankly, lousy. However, my instructor had never demonstrated, nor discussed, the situation (although in hindsight I probably should have anticipated it). I failed, took 15 minutes of instruction later in the day and the next day (IIR 24 hours between check rides is required) I took the check again and passed. Fortunately, the examiner was and is a close friend (but obviously honest and competent) and let me just demonstrate the one failed action ...and I passed, probably a better pilot for the experience.

I do not fly commercially for a living, although qualified, but when I take people up my safety spiel always includes prehandles the issue. Something along the lines of the flight is perfectly safe as evidenced by the fact there is something on this aircraft more important than you ... me.

True, but a pilot should be able to identify an incipient stall by other means (inconsistent airspeed, a 'wrong' feeling in the eat of ones pants, etc.) Like the stall warning horn, the shaker is notice that action should already have been taken. I've never even flown with a stick shaker yet there's usually something unmistakable about that impending stall. And I have flown in icing conditions and the aircraft's behavior is significantly odd and easy to notice (although granted the cause may not be immediately deduced).

azj

T/BE20/G - VERY well stated in all comments.

T/BE20/G

And if you were asking an impartial 3rd party whether the situation was safe, this would make perfect sense. But you're not... you're asking the person who, perhaps wrongly, thinks that they are in perfect condition to fly. As you mentioned, people often don't recognize their own limitations. If I'm exhausted, but don't recognize it, then my answer when you ask is going to be that I'm well rested. My point is not that the crewmembers are infallible; it's that if they recognized that something was unsafe, they would have addressed problem, and if they don't recognize that it's unsafe - even if it's a failure to recognize their own limitations - then they're going to answer that there's no problem.

All of that said, if you were to ask me on the line whether I was well rested, or whether the plane was safe even though it's little, or any other question, you would get an honest, professional reply. If it eases your mind, or the mind of any other passengers, to ask such questions, have at it. Part of my job is to make the flight as comfortable for you as I can while operating safely, and if telling you specifically that I'm sober and well rested makes you more comfortable, then I'm happy to do so.
Yes, of course this is true. Unfortunately, as humans, pilots make mistakes. Sometimes - very rarely, fortunately - they let things slip by that they should have noticed. That's why we have warning systems... so that when we miss something we should have noticed, we get a more forceful warning. These warning systems, though, are more effective if we know what to expect.

It's been speculated that Captain Renslow may have thought he was experiencing a tail plane stall, given that his experience was in an airplane that was susceptible to that condition. If he had been given sim training on the stick pusher, maybe that would have helped in recognize that the nose-over was from that system, rather than being from a tail stall. While the goal is to never get into a situation that requires our warning systems, the are there as recognition of the fact that sometimes we do. Obviously, then, if the stick pusher - or any other warning system - goes off, the situation has already gotten at least somewhat out of hand. That's not the time to be experiencing new things in the airplane... they should be experienced first in the sim so that you understand what's happening when it happens on the line.

Tom Williams

First of all, I give you my appreciation for posting here. Posts like yours add value to the forum, which has lately been on a downhill slide.

Regarding the question of whether you are rested or not - I think this is not truly a black and white issue. If you didn't sleep very well, or enough, for whatever reason the night before a flight, aren't you faced with weighing the extent of your fatigue against the consequences of declaring yourself too tired to fly? Wouldn't a pilot's declaration to his employer that he was not able to fly cause a lot of trouble to find another crew, upset onward flight schedules due to the delay, etc.? Surely this consideration is part of a pilot's evaluation of whether he can fly or not?

T/BE20/G

Yes, your assessment here is correct. My point, though, is that by the time you ask me whether I'm well rested, I've already decided that I'm in a safe condition to fly the flight. If I've decided that I'm rested enough to fly safely, then my answer to you will be that I am well rested. While calling out fatigued could cause problems for the airline, that's what I'll do if I don't feel that it's safe for me to operate the flight. If I'm not tired enough to feel at risk, and I'm not tired enough to call off, then I'm not tired enough to tell you that I'm not adequately rested.

A separate issue that was raised earlier was that sometimes we have a hard time judging our own condition, and it's certainly possible for people to think that we're in a better condition than we are. In that case, though we may be tired to the point of reducing safety, we will deny it not to lie to passengers and give a false sense of security, but because we truly believe that we are safe. It all comes back to this: If a pilot didn't believe that the flight was safe, for any reason, (s)he wouldn't be operating the flight, so when you ask us whether it's safe, of course we're going to answer that it is. If we were to tell you that it wasn't, that would mean that we were planning to knowingly put ourselves at undue risk.

All that said, I can't emphasize enough that I absolutely support your right to ask me questions like this when you board, or at any time. If that makes a passenger feel safer, then I'm happy to answer... just don't be surprised that you never hear a pilot tell you that he has concerns that the safety of the flight is in jeopardy, because he wouldn't be flying if he felt that were the case.

MikeMpls

They've been independent for years and were not "released" to do anything. That was part of the "cost" NW paid in bankruptcy when they where trying screw Pinnacle & still keep them flying for NW. That's > 2 years in the past at this point.

Evan!

T/BE20/G, very well put. One reason why I would never ask a pilot if he is rested is because of the reasons you stated. What's he gonna say? No? I guess after a while this would indeed "boggle your mind". Mea culpa.

Steph3n

yes I know this all, but it is still a fact and part of their history and intertwined. I am simply saying Colgan and Pinnacle are one in the same. which have a tight relationship with NW/DL and operate for other carriers as well.