They got a stall warning so the pilot pulled back the yoke to raise the nose ?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,495267,00.html

I could even see keeping the nose level and applying power, but what sort of fool raises the nose for a stall warning?

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quote:

but what sort of fool raises the nose for a stall warning?

A dead one?

Keith

I'll wait for the official report, ice buildup in crappy weather seems a little more plausible than yanking the yoke back when the stall warning comes on.

What has been stated as fact in the news I read was:

- Pilots commented on severe ice buildup
- De-ice was on
- AP was on
- Flaps and gear were lowered
- The plane dropped off the sky when the flaps went down

The Dash-8 is a high-wing, you can't see what's happening up there.

I've never been in ice, but one thing is engraved on the back of my brain: ice messes up your airfoil, and you'll stall before you know it.

So my first reaction when I read about the crash was "They commented about heavy icing, and they dropped the flaps??????? Moreover on AP?"

My uneducated instinctive reaction would be to keep speed up, keep flaps up, kill the AP, and be veeeeeery careful with that stick.

I don't know how long is the runway at Buffalo, but these Dash-8 can land pretty short, and slow down very fast with beta.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

E-mail to me this morning from a Dash-8 pilot with LOOOOOTS of Hours...

quote:

Never leave the autopilot on in moderate or worse icing. You won't have a feel for how the airplane is flying. Tail ices much faster than wings, and you can't see how well the boots are working back there. Also can't tell is the load of ice symmetrical across the wings. Had a 24 year-old female in right seat. Not much help in that situation. Capt. only had 110 hours in type as the airline hasn't had -400s very long.

Flying in icing conditions can create more than one odd effect...

With your deicing on an ice lip can still form further back on the wing and not be an issue until the flaps are lowered

when the flaps go down the nose goes goes down as the center of lift moves aft on the wing... this moves the ice
rim into a point of faster airflow after which "Bad shit happens"

the ice that wasn't an issue at the no flaps AOA becomes a HUGE issue at the flaps down AOA.

There are times when the safest thing to do is stay in a nice warm hangar and wait for the weather to go away...


Failing that you can lower the flaps at higher altitude to PROVE you don't have a problem and then you MIGHT have time to correct for it, or make a long shallow no flaps decent (terrain allowing) onto a longer runway and accept the higher touchdown speed.

Just don't land "long", though landing overruns are far less likely to be lethal than ice induced stalls on final.

I know which kind of accident I'd rather be an unwilling part of as a passenger.

This is not the first time a commuter class aircraft
has fallen out of the sky when the flaps
were lowered in icing conditions, sadly I doubt it'll be the last either.

quote:

Had a 24 year-old female in right seat. Not much help in that situation. Capt. only had 110 hours in type

That 24 year old female had a lot more time on type than Captain Fugup did. He might have done well to hide his head in his hands, scream like a little girl, and say "You have it!". Maybe she'd have saved his sorry ass. It always rankles me when somebody is that prejudicial.

We had an 19 year old girl who had an engine failure on a solo cross country in a PA-20. She landed neatly on a 20' wide gravel road, calmly raised one wing on rollout to avoid a tall curve sign, tailed the aircraft onto an approach and tied it down, and thumbed a ride to a pay phone to let us know where she was! Last I heard of her she was chief pilot for a charter outfit, and flying Citations. Never sell 'em short because of gender or age.

The guy in the LEFT seat - the pilot in command of the aircraft - screwed up and killed the 24 year old in the right seat along with everybody else. I don't care how much time he had on type - that was a bonehead piece of flying regardless of type. End of story.

quote:

Originally posted by Tumbleweed:

quote:

Had a 24 year-old female in right seat. Not much help in that situation. Capt. only had 110 hours in type

That 24 year old female had a lot more time on type than Captain Fugup did. He might have done well to hide his head in his hands, scream like a little girl, and say "You have it!". Maybe she'd have saved his sorry ass. It always rankles me when somebody is that prejudicial.

We had an 19 year old girl who had an engine failure on a solo cross country in a PA-20. She landed neatly on a 20' wide gravel road, calmly raised one wing on rollout to avoid a tall curve sign, tailed the aircraft onto an approach and tied it down, and thumbed a ride to a pay phone to let us know where she was! Last I heard of her she was chief pilot for a charter outfit, and flying Citations. Never sell 'em short because of gender or age.

The guy in the LEFT seat - the pilot in command of the aircraft - screwed up and killed the 24 year old in the right seat along with everybody else. I don't care how much time he had on type - that was a bonehead piece of flying regardless of type. End of story.

Just like over if the PF Tumbleweed you haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. I thought you were run off the PF and AR - now I see your silly ass is back again...good we're running low on dumb-asses...

quote:

Originally posted by Palmer:
They got a stall warning so the pilot pulled back the yoke to raise the nose ?

This sounds like a classic icing induced tail plane stall with flap deployment. Which on a T-tailed aircraft like the Q-400 causes the nose to sharply drop which would explain why the captain would have yanked back on the yoke.

Having your nose dump at low altitude in the soup is not a happy feeling and if the icing was severe enough this may well have been a non recoverable situation. This exact same situation has killed more than one airplane. The B-1900 had a severe issue with this as did the ATR and the old short Merlin III I used to fly. We were advised not to use more than half flaps with visible ice on the wings. From what I've seen a tail plane stall is a violent and often unrecoverable nose down pitching moment.

I wouldn't go calling anybody a "fugup" or a fool just yet.

As far as chick pilots go having spent 7 years in the training department of my airline I've met many who could fly your ass off. I don't care how good you think you are..


As far as what happened I'll let the NTSB have some time with this before I go name calling. And I definitely won't be basing any opinions based on the F'ING press reports!

Short of doing a China Airlines 006 (getting your ass into trouble before you pull a hero move and getting it back out)
most pilot screwups are uncorrectable and it rarely takes more than ONE mistake to make a flight end badly.

at night, in bad weather, with icing conditions, while landing?

What is amazing is not that it happens, but that it doesn't happen more often.


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quote:

Originally posted by Mark:
I'll wait for the official report, ice buildup in crappy weather seems a little more plausible than yanking the yoke back when the stall warning comes on.

It's called "The Probable Cause," gentleman. Everything else, particularly ignorant reports from a completely unenlightened press before the ashes have completely cooled, is unfair to all those involved, both living and dead.

Wait for the NTSB's report, not interim information from an NTSB who is politically motivated to demonstrate to the circling sharks that they are actually doing something.

quote:

Originally posted by jetdrvr:

quote:

Originally posted by Mark:
I'll wait for the official report, ice buildup in crappy weather seems a little more plausible than yanking the yoke back when the stall warning comes on.

Wait for the NTSB's report, not interim information from an NTSB who is politically motivated to demonstrate to the circling sharks that they are actually doing something.

Bingo, let's not prejudge the investigation and the accidents cause until the facts are in.

The DC9 series has issues with tailplane icing, like a lot of T-tailed airplanes. The Q400 might be another airplane that should not be flown in moderate to sever icing conditions.

That Captain in front of my name was earned over a 31 year flying everything from J-3's to Attack Helicopters to B757's. I'll wait for the fact's before I spout off any wild ass guesses as to what happened.

God rest their souls.

At the risk of excessive speculation....

T-tailed aircraft are prone to something that non-T aircraft are usually not... "Deep Stall"

If you stall the aircraft and manage to catch it at just the right AOA to put the tailplane in the disturbed air from the wing...

Well, you sometimes can "rock it out", but that takes time and altitude that this aircraft simply didn't have.



AD

I wonder why the damned thing has a T tail in the first place? Has to be marketing getting involved in design. I can't think of a single practical reason why the -400 has one, and a few reasons why it shouldn't.

Tail needs a lot of leverage with a tub that long and heavy I'd say. More efficient if it's in clean air rather than behind a pair of 5000 HP Cuisinarts ...just speculation on my part...

quote:

Originally posted by Macifej:
Tail needs a lot of leverage with a tub that long and heavy I'd say. More efficient if it's in clean air rather than behind a pair of 5000 HP Cuisinarts ...just speculation on my part...

T-tails on turbo props are ALWAYS to get the horizontal stabilizer out of the propwash.

Dash7, Dash8, Q400 or the various later model Beechcraft KingAirs al for the same reason.

Simple rule? Don't stall the phucker.


Can anyone say: "runback ice"?

Ok now say it without a cold chill and nausea...

AD

quote:

Originally posted by Allan DeGroot:

Can anyone say: "runback ice"?

Ok now say it without a cold chill and nausea...

AD

Allan we have a new and improved term for that kind of ice. It's called impingement flow back.

Clear or mixed ice all the same!

quote:

Simple rule? Don't stall the phucker.

Yeah, that's what we really need...an airplane you can't stall. I like my control surfaces in small and medium aircraft down in the prop wash. That can save your ass.

I once made a low pass out over the Everglades in one of those T tail Pipers to look at a deer. Pulling out, I had full throttle and full up elevator and the bitch was still going down. Damned near killed me. Last time I ever climbed in one of those.

That POS flunked spin tests and the factory test pilot had to pull the spin chute on both attempts at spin recovery. It would not come out of a spin. Yet, Piper sold the fancy POS because it looked cool sitting on the ramp. You needed a ladder for the walkaround.

Can't stall a 747, either, but it has underslung engines. No T tail, though, so no deep stall.

I've been in a lot of ice in one place or another. Flew a Herc out of YIP one day just as the leading edge of a front hit. Thank God for hot wings and hot windshields. For a couple of seconds there, we looked like a snow cone.

I've never trusted boots. And that upstate New York winter weather is truly a bitch.

I feel for those 135 crews having to deal with it in those small turboprops. Lousy pay, lousy management, and lousy work rules. They fly tired most of the time. Makes me wonder just how much crew rest they'd had prior to the trip and what the duty time was for the crew that went in. Fatigue slows reaction time substiantially. There are many factors potentially involved here. I am forming no opinion until the report is out, and maybe not even then.

There's "stall" then there's "Deep stall"

when the flight envelope specifications have a notation that says in effect "Here there be dragons" you don't go sightseeing!

Low & slow in the soup with pax aboard?

T-tail aside the Q400 is a SAFE airplane
There are exactly TWO fatal accidents involving Dash8/Q400 aircraft and the other one was a "CFIT" accident in NewZealand (Ansett New Zealand Flight 703) and even in that case (three crew and 18pax) there were only 4 fatalities

Clouds are bad, clouds that contain ice are worse, clouds that contain rocks are usually lethal, fortunatly in that case not to everyone aboard...

quote:

Clouds are bad, clouds that contain ice are worse, clouds that contain rocks are usually lethal, fortunatly in that case not to everyone aboard...

Yeah, clouds in the winter in upstate New York are invariably bad. Flew night mail up there in Beech 18's during the late 60's. We're the guys they wrote Part 135 because of. There were mail planes scattered all over the landscape in PA and NY.

Cumulogranite is normally fatal. Cumulonimbus and cumulogranite are a really lethal mix, re the northern Andes in the rainy season.

even powdered rock will try to kill you, remember that 747 enroute from sngapore(?) to Oz that ashed up all four engines?

Fortunatly they managed to restart the engines and land safely.

any kind of rocks and airplanes are a bad mix... presuming those rocks aren't very small and under the tires... and preferably glued together with cement or tar.



AD

Thee's a lot of volcanic activity in the Papua New Guinea/Indonesia area. Flying between Port Moresby and Singapore, we saw several volcanic islands in the area. Earthquakes and volcanoes. That was an interesting tour.

Probably still a warning out on Soufrieire (sp) down in the Caribbean. Haven't heard much about that one in a while, but ash will definitely flame out your engines.

quote:

Originally posted by Tumbleweed:

quote:

Had a 24 year-old female in right seat. Not much help in that situation. Capt. only had 110 hours in type

That 24 year old female had a lot more time on type than Captain Fugup did. He might have done well to hide his head in his hands, scream like a little girl, and say "You have it!". Maybe she'd have saved his sorry ass. It always rankles me when somebody is that prejudicial.

We had an 19 year old girl who had an engine failure on a solo cross country in a PA-20. She landed neatly on a 20' wide gravel road, calmly raised one wing on rollout to avoid a tall curve sign, tailed the aircraft onto an approach and tied it down, and thumbed a ride to a pay phone to let us know where she was! Last I heard of her she was chief pilot for a charter outfit, and flying Citations. Never sell 'em short because of gender or age.

The guy in the LEFT seat - the pilot in command of the aircraft - screwed up and killed the 24 year old in the right seat along with everybody else. I don't care how much time he had on type - that was a bonehead piece of flying regardless of type. End of story.

You're not talking Rosella Bjornson [Maiden name] here are you? Flew with her in the Uof C flying club many years ago. Saw her in a tv piece, one of the first ladies to fly 737s.
Grizz

As far as female pilots are concerned, I've seen good ones and bad ones, just like male pilots. We had a female 707 captain at Southern Air. She's been with American for years. Names Linda Pawels. I think she was the first women to ever get a captain's seat in the 707, anywhere. We also had a female Herc captain. There were other excellent female pilots working for us.

If you got through Southern's primary and sim class, they knew you could fly. Nobody made it on looks alone. Captain upgrade on any type was a real bitch. No slack.

I once flew with a girl who was an excellent Twin Beech pilot. There are a lot of guys who can't fly a Twin Beech. She has been a captain for UPS for years. Last I heard of her she was on DC-8's, but I think they're all gone. I don't know what she's in now, likely 767's.

And we had a couple of FO's that were flirts. We had one who was blown up by a land mine in the Sudan at Wao. The muslim army commander wouldn't give her morphine because she was a woman, although she had burns and a fractured heel. So discrimination against female pilots isn't strictly a Western phenomenon.

About what we expected.

http://online.wsj.com/article/...200193256505099.html

quote:

Originally posted by f224:

quote:

Originally posted by jetdrvr:

quote:

Originally posted by Mark:
I'll wait for the official report, ice buildup in crappy weather seems a little more plausible than yanking the yoke back when the stall warning comes on.

Wait for the NTSB's report, not interim information from an NTSB who is politically motivated to demonstrate to the circling sharks that they are actually doing something.

Bingo, let's not prejudge the investigation and the accidents cause until the facts are in.

The DC9 series has issues with tailplane icing, like a lot of T-tailed airplanes. The Q400 might be another airplane that should not be flown in moderate to sever icing conditions.

That Captain in front of my name was earned over a 31 year flying everything from J-3's to Attack Helicopters to B757's. I'll wait for the fact's before I spout off any wild ass guesses as to what happened.

God rest their souls.

+1 - RIP