Cross posted, this is by Golfer, on the usmc squad temp o'club
WASHINGTON, June 13 - Alone in their 50-seat commercial jet, the two young pilots decided to see what it could do.
According to documents released Monday by the National Transportation Safety Board, they climbed so fast that they were pushed down into their seats with 2.3 times the normal force of gravity, zooming toward 41,000 feet, the limit of their Bombardier CRJ200.
"Ooh, look at that," said the second-in-command, Peter R. Cesarz, 23, apparently referring to cockpit readings. "Pretty cool."
"Man, we can do it," said the captain, Jesse Rhodes, 31. "Forty-one it," he said, referring to the maximum altitude.
A few minutes later, though, both engines were dead, and the pilots were struggling to glide to an emergency landing at an airport in Jefferson City, Mo. "We're going to hit houses, dude," one of them said.
The plane crashed two and a half miles from the runway, missing the houses but killing the pilots.
On Monday, the safety board opened three days of hearings into the crash, which occurred last Oct. 14 on a night flight from Little Rock, Ark., to Minneapolis, to reposition the plane for the next day's schedule.
Among the questions at issue is whether the plane's two engines, which are designed to be capable of restarting in flight, may have seized up, resisting four efforts to get them running. Another is whether the airline, Pinnacle, which is rapidly growing and moving young pilots from turboprops into jets, provided appropriate training.
Some investigators say the pilots flew the plane far harder than an airline would fly with passengers on board, and in testimony on Monday, Terry Mefford, Pinnacle's chief pilot, agreed.
"If there's people in the airplane," he said, "you can count that the crew members are pretty much going by the book."
Mr. Mefford also said that since the accident, he had heard talk of a "410 club," whose members had flown the Bombardier to Flight Level 410, or 41,000 feet. Investigators for the safety board apparently heard similar talk. "Investigators formed the impression," a board report said, "that there was a sense of allure to some pilots to cruise at FL 410 just to say they had 'been there and done that.' "
The two pilots had set the autopilot to take the plane to its 41,000-foot limit, but instead of specifying the speed at which it should fly while climbing, they specified the rate of climb. When the jet reached the assigned altitude, it was flying relatively slowly.
The transcript of their conversation as captured by the cockpit voice recorder suggests exhilaration. An air traffic controller with jurisdiction over the flight asked at one point, "3701, are you an RJ-200?"
"That's affirmative," one of the pilots replied.
"I've never seen you guys up at 41 there," she said.
Then there was laughter in the cockpit.
"Yeah, we're actually a, there's ah, we don't have any passengers on board, so we decided to have a little fun and come on up here," one of the pilots answered.
In the thin air, though, the engines had less thrust, and the plane slowed further. The nose pitched up as the autopilot tried to keep it at the assigned altitude, and then an automatic system began warning that the plane was approaching a "stall," in which there is too little lift to maintain flight.
"Dude, it's losing it," one pilot said, using an expletive. "Yeah," the other said.
But as an automatic system tried to push the nose down, to gain speed and prevent the stall, the pilots, for reasons that are unclear, overrode it.
So the plane did stall, and the turbulent air flowing off the wings entered the engines, shutting them down.
At that point, the safety board says, the plane was within gliding range of five suitable airports. Yet the pilots did not tell the controller the full extent of their problem, reporting that they had lost one engine, not both, and it was not until 14 minutes later that one said: "We need direct to any airport. We have a double engine failure."
The airline has denounced the pilots.
"It's beyond belief that a professional air crew would act in that manner," said Thomas Palmer, former manager of Pinnacle's training program for that model of jet. He said the crew had evidently disregarded "training and common airmanship."
But the Air Line Pilots Association says Pinnacle's safety program had crucial gaps, including lack of training for high altitudes. It also maintains that the engines suffered "core lock," in which engines running at high thrust are shut down suddenly and, when the parts cool at different rates, some rotating components bind up.
General Electric, which built the engines, says they did not seize up.
To be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, engines must be capable of restarting in flight. One issue that the safety board will have to resolve is whether the engines on this plane met that rule.
When I was at an ATP location in Vegas knocking out my flight instructor ratings I had seen nothing but red flags. There are so many experience and knowledge gaps there by these knuckleheads being hired at Express Jet with as little as 500 hours having flown only in a contained bubble in the ATP (Or any other "academy") environment. Just yesterday I was talking about how god help the passengers on board an RJ with a new captain fresh out of his upgrade and IOE restrictions paired with a wet behind the ears right seat ATP or academy graduate. If something goes horribly wrong...there is no chance in hell that crew, in my mind, pull a Sioux City miracle and save lives.
Just looking back to 500 hours I realize all the neat, curious and "hmm i wonder what that's doing that for" moments I've seen also the way that the academies fly. It's a bubble...pure and simple. Nobody at the Las Vegas location had seen an airplane engine with the cowling removed. They had no idea how to get around without their dual GPS navigators. They had mistaken a trace of ice for severe icing...and boasted in a story about their encounter with severe ice. Their most exciting moment in an airplane was a low pass once in a 172.
I can still remember vividly my intro flight lesson as if it were yesterday. I can sift through my logbook and recognize most flights in my first 1100 hours of experience thanks to the remarks section of a logbook. I can recognize how much I've learned between now and every little milestone I've had. 100 hours, 250 hrs, 500 hrs...thinking about thoughts I had on flights then and things I've done...makes ya wonder when something really goes wrong for a relatively inexperienced airline crew how will they handle it. In this case...their self induced engine failures because of a severe lack of knowledge. High altitude training, experience and general knowledge would have prevented this. The worst part is...it's not the pilot's fault when they go through training.
At ATP they're spoon fed info to spit out just to pass checkrides. I hate to say it, but looking back the instructor in charge of the CFI's didn't care if you learned anything or would be a good instructor. He cared about his pass rate, which was astoundingly high and after going through my checkrides excessively overprepared for what was being asked of me...it's easy to see why they passed.
