Well, 3407 was kind of a result of icing... They were talking about tailplane icing when they should have had sterile cockpit, and when they neglected to pay attention to airspeed, the captain felt the stick shaker and reacted as if it was tailplane icing, causing a quick stall. I can't remember if he buried the yoke in his lap the whole way down (or even if that was part of the report) but it seems like he was so convinced in his head that they were going to experience tailplane icing that he stalled the plane reacting to the imaginary tailplane icing.
We'll agree to disagree. I think that take is wild revisionary history merely meant to soften the discomfort many in the US have of speaking "ill" of dead people, full stop.
I'd be more willing to give credit to the blame-shifting argument that they were fatigued as all get out. Lord knows they both exercised incredible levels of professional imprudence in the manner in which they managed their commute and rest. Pretty selfish behavior given the gravity of carrying unsuspecting paying passengers. To be clear, this imprudence was commonplace at the time (still is to a degree, with the open time tourney players); they were not the only ones guilty of it.
That CVR transcript you attach the tailplane space aliens potato onto (and that other guy's article) is there for all to read. You know what they talked about
more than icing?
-Schedules.
-Laughing about atrocious sleep arrangements.
-Moving on from Colgan.
-Alaska Airline pipe dreams.
-Openly admitting flying with a head cold (for the FO) and wondering how to push thru before incurring out of pocket bed accomodations.
I mean, if one weren't any less charitable, you could straight up label that CVR a freggin' suicide note and you wouldn't be hyperbolic. Tailplane stall... spare me.
That CA had zero innate situational awareness, had a litany of training failures in basic aircraft control, and had no business being PIC in a 121 environment at the stage of his own demonstrated proficiency. My heart aches for the young daughter he left to be raised by a sole mother behind, but some people need to know when to fold 'em. Suggesting he had the OODA loop to be principally misanalyzing a (statistical) outlier icing aerodynamic phenomena, as opposed to yet again doing his demonstrated-in-simulator Occam shtick (aka 'panic pull', we call it fainting goat reflex in my side of flying) is just a way to ascribe a baseline of competency that he didn't possess. That matters because to admit it was my causation (the politically incorrect one) that did them in, and not the one you profer (the politically correct one), is to admit two things:
1)single standard of safety was a myth and
2) PFT was a gold rush of dreamers running with scissors, and it bit the industry finally.
That's also why barriers to entry exist in this life, or ought to.
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