[fingpilot]

I have been sitting on my hands for a lot of this discussion.

Guys, you missed the most important part of this captains' (yes, no caps) discussion with his SIC. He basically said that his 1600-ish TOTAL hours were inflated by (inferred) a thou. That he had been 'advised' that it was what he needed to get on at Alaska (where he has a 'bud')... (betcha that bud, if he really exists, is sweating bullets in the Alaska CP's office)..... That means that the SIC's time (ASSuming she didn't 'pencil-whip her time as well) was probably the same or she had even MORE than he had.

Sooooooooooo..... I know I have been with one of these type of idiots in a sim, or even worse, in an airplane. Their 'lack of BTDT' shows pretty quickly, and is ALWAYS followed by a call to my CP (if I wasn't it) and my concerns, and the 'event' that led to those concerns were discussed. Always followed by a review of the application and training records.

In 100% of the cases..... not 99.9, not 76%... 100% of the time, the falsehoods were uncovered with only the barest of checking.

Here's the really funny part. A previous employer CANNOT tell a reference checker officially why someone was let go. CANNOT. The only way is thru the lunch chat, or the good-ole-boy-network. The fact that this guy flunked several previous employment checks does not surprise me. The fact that he was hired and promoted to captain at Colgan/Pinnacle does not surprise me.

There is a not-so-funny similarity to checking social security numbers of employees by employers these days. The check is of the number only.... privacy laws (ACLU) do not allow a name match. So the prospective employee simply has to keep guessing until he gets a good SS# to pass the pre-employment check. An employer CANNOT check legal status by name.

The fact that no one that flew with him ever spoke up DOES surprise me. Maybe it's really that bad out there.

I was lucky; the people I worked for over the years (with the exception of corporate flight management companies) actually DID care about what is going on in the field.

The bad apples were rarely let loose in 50 million dollar jets with high profile clientele in back. It did happen, but their careers were short-lived. Until 9-11. Everything changed after that, even at the best of flight departments. Sorry, but is why I got out of corporate.

Murphy, once again, was at work over upstate New York that night. Two newbies ended up in the same plane together, and the simplest of approaches went wrong. For a really stupid reason.

They got slow.

That's it. Icing was not really a factor. They slowed even below the non-icing stall speed (even slower than the icing stall speed), with the engines at idle, and the props at high RPM/high drag.

Because they forgot that a level off ALWAYS needs additional power to sustain flight.

Then they forgot the training. Even the most basic training. The shaker went off. Then the pusher. They overrode the pusher. Never restored the power.

Then they panicked. Flaps were retracted (exactly wrong, in fact, could not have been more wrong).

Then they screamed.

Then they died.

Oh yeah, 48 other trusting souls died with them.



There are lots of theories about how the SIC was actually running the wind-shear recovery memory items. She ASSumed the pilot was on the same plane. He wasn't. There has been some discussion about the role of icing. If the worst case scenario icing was present, it would not have made the difference here. These pilots died when they levelled off, and got slow, icing or not. Basic airmanship. Autopilots...use em if ya have em. The autopilot didn't kill these guys. I suspect if he had been hand-flying that night, it would have been even worse. The stick-pusher disconnected the autopilot anyway.

The kind of airmanship that was needed that night occurrs with BTDT, or around a thousand hours. Seems neither or them had it.