Investigators examining last week’s Continental Connection plane crash have gathered evidence that pilot commands — not a buildup of ice on the wings and tail — likely initiated the fatal dive of the twin-engine Bombardier Q400 into a neighborhood six miles short of the Buffalo, N.Y., airport, according to people familiar with the situation.
The commuter plane slowed to an unsafe speed as it approached the airport, causing an automatic stall warning, these people said. The pilot pulled back sharply on the plane’s controls and added power instead of following the proper procedure of pushing forward to lower the plane’s nose to regain speed, they said. He held the controls there, locking the airplane into a deadly stall, they added…
According to the plane’s flight recorders, Flight 3407′s descent into Buffalo was routine until roughly a minute before impact, when the crew lowered the landing gear, followed by the command to extend the wing flaps, which enable the plane to fly at slower speeds.
Almost immediately, these people say, the plane’s air speed slowed rapidly, causing a stall-warning device known as a “stick-shaker” to cause the pilots’ control column to vibrate. This was followed by a “stick-pusher,” which automatically forces the stick forward.
At this point, the captain appears to have pulled back with enough force to overpower the stick-pusher and shoved the throttles to full power, according to people familiar with the matter. Safety board officials said the nose pitched up to a 31-degree angle. Already at a dangerously low speed, the wings immediately stopped generating lift.
I can’t even begin to imagine why an ATP-certificated pilot-in-command would do such a thing. Stall recovery is one of the first things taught in early flight training and early transition training. Pulling back on the yoke while in stall forms no part of that training.
Huh.
Makes me wonder if the pilot thought the forward yoke pressure was due to a tailplane stall (and not the pusher working to stop a wing stall) and therefore decided he needed to fight it.
It is also confusing to note that what the automated stall warning/avoidance action mimicked was that of the tailstall shown in the NASA film—i.e. yoke shake followed by sudden movement of the yoke forward due to the movement of the detachment point backward to the control surface. In either case (stall or tailstall), the pilot reaction was incorrect.
I saw a story reporting this earlier, and I just assumed that the MSM was demonstrating their usual lack of comprehension of all things aviation related. Unfortunately, the follow up reports seem to confirm the seemingly inexplicable response of the crew.
Is it possible that they were anticipating an ice-contaminated tailplane stall? The NASA video linked in the earlier thread showed the onset of an ICTS causing the yoke to slam forward with a lot of force, and indicated that recovery required enough aft stick input to overcome large forces. While watching the video, it occurred to me that applying the recommended ICTS recovery procedure during a “normal” wing stall would be A Very Bad Thing.
Is it possible that the crew was concerned about incipient ICTS and mistook the stick-pusher activation for the beginning of the control reversal shown in the NASA video? Given that the situation matched the signature of an ICTS pretty well – visible ice on the airframe, triggered by a configuration change, etc. – it seems possible that they reacted quickly to the wrong problem – especially if they were faced with a sudden transition from autopilot to hand flying.
Which really gets you wondering as to what his co-pilot’s reaction was when he took those actions…very strange indeed.
especially if they were faced with a sudden transition from autopilot to hand flying.
I remember reading a report that they had been on autopilot up until just before things went wrong and that it was “not recommended” to be in auto-pilot during known icing conditions (which they certainly faced).
Sounds like the errors may have started long before the pilot moved the stick the wrong way….
How awful.
Current stall recovery at some airlines for RJ’s is to apply full power and maintain pitch attitude. Works for the simulator scenario, folks wonder about real world scenarios. Wonder if the recently-a-turboprop-captain came from the right seat of an RJ.
how sad and awful…
Jason,
I was thinking the same thing, so I went back and rewatched the NASA vid Lex talked about a few days ago. At about 16:40 in, the presenter did talk about the recovery procedures for a tailstall: pull back on the controls, and (depending on aircraft) reduce power. Opposite technique from the recovery from a wing stall, but that sounds like what the mishap pilot did.
The other thing I took from the vid is something that is SOP: if you get an unusual response from a configuration change (flaps/slats), return the surfaces to their original positions. I wonder what the flap position was (since more flap deflection increases drag rather than lift) and whether they tried to return to cruise config.
Scuttlebutt says the SAAB he flew before had a problem with tailplane icing, and when that happened the nose would drop. The procedure was to horse back on the yoke to keep it up.
Question remains: how did they get so slow that stick-shaker got involved. If he was able to get 31 degrees nose up by hauling back on the yoke, I’d guess something was lying about their airspeed. Unless the pitch-up was part of a weird post-stall gyration, he apparently had lots of control authority.
For starters leaving the auto on is beyond my comprehension. Every fiber in my body would tell me to have my own hands on the controls under inclement conditions–especially when shooting an approach. But beyond vaulting that hurdle, since it’s probably the automatic, gut instinct of 99% of all the pilots in the world to reflexively dump the nose in reaction to approach to stall indications, I, like others here, have got to think it was either a mis-diagnosis of a tailplane stall or something’s still missing from the equation.
I’m like Lex: “Huh?”
Sumptin’ doesn’t add up here. It will all come out in time. For now I’m thinking we ain’t getting the whole picture.
PS: I might comment about about the possible make-up of the accident-investigation team. I was on one such team when a bird in our wing crashed on take-off at the GAF field Furstenfeldbruck (“Fursty”) just out-side Munich in really, really bad fog below not only USAF minimums, but GAF minimums (which are MUCH more lax) that had to get approval of the German’s to boot. For some ungodly reason the wx guy who was part of the team evinced an almost messianic zeal in his desire to reach a determination that wx was NOT the primary cause (it wasn’t, btw, but I thought to myself: what sort of psychology leads a wx officer to feel–it seemed to me–as if it would be a personal/professional insult if wx were found to be the primary cause?) My observation, fwiw, that I took away from that single experience is that members of those composite teams can often bring their own agendas/prejudices with them to the party which can often color/cloud
their judgment. Be careful of initial “reports.”
(Of course NTSB teams are, unlike the USAF, are comprised of people who do
nothing but accident investigation for a living and have certainly have a ton more experience in this area than USAF or other service branch teams, so my experience may not be indicative of anything–but human nature being what it is, one never knows. As the saying goes: “Where you stand depends on where you sit.”)
Of course it could be the pilot did everything right based on the information he perceived….and still got the screw twisted tight in the end. I think I’ll wait for the final report.
I watched the video and I’ve read the comments and all I have to say is God have mercy on their souls. I’m thankful it wasn’t me having to make those control input decisions in the end.
There was an incident in a routine development flight test of a helicopter at a major helicopter company many years ago. Engineering had emphasized to the test pilot not to let the rotor overspeed because high inertia blades had been installed on this particular aircraft and the potential existed for throwing a blade weight at a high enough rpm, closely followed by the departure of a blade. Not a good thing and to be avoided at all costs.
As it happened, he had one engine shut down per the test plan when the other compressor stalled and didn’t recover. The correct response, drummed into every helicopter pilot, when you lose your last engine in flight is to lower the collective to maintain rotor rpm and initiate autorotation. Due to inner workings and hidden mechanisms known to engineering but not briefed to the pilot, the dual engine failure resulted in the rotor rpm gauge falsely reading high. Because of the concern about throwing a blade, he focused on the indicated rpm to the exclusion of other and obvious indications that his rotor rpm was getting dangerously low and persisted in pulling instead of lowering the collective, even though it wasn’t having any impact on reducing the indicated rpm.
Fortunately he had enough altitude to sort things out before he completely lost control and went totally ballistic. He was able to restore enough rotor rpm so he could belly the helicopter into a farmer’s field with relatively little damage to the airframe.
The point is that it’s all to0 easy to overreact to a perceived danger and move something the wrong way.
My first thought is that it’s a heckuva lot easier to blame a dead pilot than it is to point a finger at the aircraft itself, especially since that type of aircraft is still being flown.
I’m with OldT6Flyer.
Virgil,
Jeebus… I’ve been to Fursty a number of times. We used to fly our P-3′s in there when we had long weekends and catch the train from Munich down to Garmisch-Partenkirken.
I remember the first time we flew in looking at all those Luftwaffe jets lined up in cammo & black crosses and getting a weird feeling. Then i remembered it was where the Black September crew murdered the Israeli Athletes at the ’68 Olympics.
There were still bullet & shrapnel holes on one wall of the tower that a Luftwaffe Sergeant pointed out to us.
All in all a lot of good times. I wish I could remember more about them
There were mass quantities of dunkelbeir involved. And frauleins. Beyond that, except for one story I’ll recount sometime, it was all a bit blurry.
Virg-
Another interesting USAF/USN dichotomy – in Navy Aviation safety, weather CANNOT be the cause or a contributing factor to a mishap. Might be a poor forecast, or a poor decision to operate in weather not conducive to staying alive or something like that, but it can’t be the fault of “the weather.”
Nose
PS – All of the theories of “he used to fly a plane where pulling back might have been appropriate” sound interesting. I hope this pushes NTSB to investigate training programs at the regionals. Take a low hour pilot, add a pinch of not enough quality training, and a smidge of a bad setup, sound like the makings for a mishap…
AW1Tim/
We used to hold the USAFE tennis tournament at Garmisch. Was glorious in the summer as well as winter. We (the All-UK team) were flown over in CG3rdAF’s personal C-47. One of my 1st cousins (WP ’43) was put in command of building the sports facilities at the rec center immed. post WWII–everything you see today–the tennis courts, clubhouse, etc. Of course the ski-jump was left-over from winter Olympics.
(Why they put an Arty officer in charge of constructing a rec center is known but to the Army big thinkers–but he always had fond memories of soft briar-patch duty after just going thru the grinder a few months prior.)
Ain’t Munich great! Everything one could want–sophisticated arts and cultural scene with great museums, history and architecture–booze, food and women. TOO much!
Only problem about Fursty was you’d better not fall asleep/pass out on that train ride on the last night-train out of Munich up the mountain-side and miss the Fursty stop–as there was no getting back from the end of the line until the next day!
Oh, and Tim, I just missed the 72 Olympics by one year. Was really weird sitting back in the US and watching everything on TV when you had personally practically trod where the terrorists had the shoot-out only a year previously.
As a Naval Aviator with 21 years in a Navy cockpit, and 3 years in a commuter turboprop and now 14 years experience at a major airline and Capt, I am dissappointed with the WSJ and the NTSB. Both are feeding speculation and innuendo to hang the pilots. The same rush to herohood bestowed on Sully is now in complete reverse. The NTSB used to be a fair party to objectively determine the cause of an accident. Now the NTSB holds speculative and titillating press conferences blaming the pilots.
Disgusting. Thousand issues that haven’t been mentioned but almost everyone, backed by some salivating lawyers, have already put the blame on the pilots. Maybe, but for all of you that ride in the back of airplanes, an accurate determination serves your interest and mine, not this type of speculation.
Pilot error is alwful convenient, but it isn’t often a clean and only answer, the true cause then does not get addressed and in 10 years you will sacrifice another 50 humans to the same cause.
Love the stigma on ‘commuter’ pilots. In Europe and Asia, often the big airline driver copilots have less experience than the US crews. Oh well, let the merriment continue…..
Ignorance is bliss
It is surprising to see these details leaked out by NTSB. Not that long ago they took the stance of “let’s wait until all the facts are known”
Pilot Error may be a factor, perhaps even a dominant one, in this case. But it surely isn’t the only one and it doesn’t serve anyone for rampant speculation to create perceptions that, even though clarified and corrected in the future, will linger with the caustic effects such limited-fact based bias always causes no matter what the underlying truth turns out to be.
We’ve already gone from, “it was ice” to “it was ice and the autopilot” to It was ice and the pilot’s response to it” in a couple of news cycles.
Time to take a pill and wait for the investigation. The victim’s families deserve more a more dignified response from our officials.
And sometimes, no matter how great the skill of the crew, or how well designed and built the machine, stuff happens. I’ll be happy to wait for the board to complete it’s work. Any reasonable person would feel the same way, as a rush to judgment serves nothing but expediency.
respects,
“We are being paid to avoid hazard, but there are still many unexplored crevasses in our reservoir of knolwedge. Our zeal for air transport is always soured when we so easily reflect on failures involving certain late comrades, who proved in the final analysis to be, like ourselves, only the tip of the arrow. We are obliged to recognize our possible epitaph-His end was abrupt.”
-Ernest K. Gann