Buffalo Plane Crash Pilot Did "Exact Opposite" Of What He Should Have

Colgan Air officials said that they had changed hiring requirement for pilots, raising the number of hours flown from 600 to 1000 hours. The move is a response to the fatal Continental Flight 3407 plane crash—operated by Colgan— from Newark to Buffalo, which killed the 49 passengers and crew members plus one person on the ground. The flight's pilot, Marvin Renslow, only had 625 hours of flight time; he also failed the FAA proficiency test three times.

The NY Times reported that yesterday the Colgan Air officals also "offered startling testimony that pointed fingers at their own pilots. John Erwin Barrett, the airline’s director of flight standards, said neither pilot in the twin-engine turboprop was paying attention to the flight instruments... The airline’s director of operations, Dean Bandavanis, said he thought the crew lacked 'integrity,' which he defined as 'doing the right thing when nobody’s watching.'" At issue was both Renslow's and co-pilot Rebecca Shaw's chatter below 10,000 feet (a violation of FAA rules) and Renslow's reaction to the plane's difficulties.

One of the people to testify at the NTSB hearings was the chief test pilot for the Bombardier Q-400. According to the Buffalo News, "Capt. Wally Warner, who said he conducted more than 1,000 stall recoveries for the Q-400 test flights, was asked by Debbie Hersman, a NTSB board member, what the Flight 3407 crew did right as it approached the Buffalo International Airport on Feb. 12. 'Obviously, the initial reaction to the stall warning was incorrect, that set the course for their actions,' Warner testified." While Renslow pulled back the yoke to bring the plane upward, Warner "said the proper thing to do, as he done the 1,000 times he put the Q-400 through its paces, was to lower the nose — not raise it as he did — and increase power."

The NTSB released an animation of the flight, with animation of the yoke as well.

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By Jen Chung in News on May 13, 2009 11:37 AM

Comments [rss]

NannyState

Add two more plaques for the "Fallen ITT Technical School Graduates Memorial"...

jules1000

my biggest fear of flying was always that something is wrong with the plane. I never expected such incompetent pilots as in the Buffalo flight could be in the cockpit.

My next flight will be in 3 weeks. I'm crossing my fingers....

hotstepper

whether it's a plane crash, a crane falling on you, or a nail gun accident, when old man death comes a-knockin'...

Thespis

After watching the video I feel a bit more sympathy for the pilots. They obviously lacked the skills and training necessary, and therefore had no business being up there in the first place. But things went very wrong a lot faster than I'd imagined -- things went from normal to critical in seconds, and then just like that it was over and they were dead.

Don't get me wrong -- these guys weren't great pilots. Even after things went wrong, it was a recoverable situation -- and if they lacked the skills to deal with a critical event they shouldn't have been anywhere near a cockpit. But I guess I'd imagined them sitting there for 30-40 seconds just dumbly staring at their controls, unable to figure out why the stick was shaking -- it apparently wasn't like that.

Sucks all around, I guess.

tmz is evil

I'd feel a lot less sympathy for these ppl had their incompetence not killed 49 passengers.

grandeur

watching that made me feel sick.

that must have been a horrible way to die.

moocowtoo

I read a bunch of the in-flight transcript and I wouldn't have wanted these guys to pilot any plane I was on. Just way too unprofessional. Too bad.

Peter

The co-pilot earned less than $17,000 per year. Guess you get what you pay for.

babyhitler

yeah, but the first pilot PAID to be a pilot. Most pilots are hobbyists who feel that controlling a big plane gives them godlike status like John Travolta.

jaycjay

"yeah, but the first pilot PAID to be a pilot."

No, he paid to fly a certain category of aircraft in order to get a particular rating. It's becoming more and more the way industry works -- worldwide -- and is really irrelevant to this incident. If he'd done that same flying putting in the same hours in the same aircraft while being paid, he would have been in exactly the same place with exactly the same experience on the day this happened.

Papercutninja

Seriously. Whatever happened to the days where being an airline pilot meant something.

Rocknrope

Captain Sully said it best in one of his magazine interviews. To paraphrase:

"30 years ago airline pilots were a step below astronauts. Today we're a step above bus drivers."

Outter Burrougher

wasn't cost effective for the airlines and people forget that while air travel might have become routine, it's still not easy

Outter Burrougher

when i say it wasn't cost effective, i'm not saying that the airlines are right, but that's the way this happened.

also to elaborate on the latter part of my comment - people started to think that air travel should be inexpensive and readily available, we started to think of pilots as just drivers, like the Sully quote posted by Rocknrope said. they're much more than that, as this past year has proven which means that they should be highly qualified and paid a living wage from day one - not minimum wage.

S.D.

$16,254???

...

...

Just Un-f___ing-believable. People responsible for making life or death decisions getting paid less than a manager at a fast food joint.