Comments on: Rebecca Shaw: Flight 3407 Cockpit Recording, Last Words

By: Kez

Kez — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:22:18 +0000

As a Captain on the Q400 in Europe, I’ve read the reports and I don’t care how old you are or what your experience is, they let that damn plane get too slow and they had the icing switch on (it gives the stall speed an extra margin for the change in airflow due to the ice)which would give even more protection….then the Captain pulls the nose into the air and it drops on a house. I’ve got thousands of hours on the Dash and it’s a great plane, all you bloggers here that say you won’t fly a commuter plane don’t know what you’re talking about, would you not drive a small car??? The training is there, those two wern’t paying attention to a 40 knot decrease in speed while on approach….it’s just sad that they wern’t doing their jobs and all those people died.

By: jddj

jddj — Sat, 16 May 2009 14:23:36 +0000

Actually, they plane was being flown on autopilot in icing conditions (1st big no-no) Pilot can’t feel what the cie is doing to the plane as the autopilot compensates for it. As to the stall, information points to a tail plane stall situation in which the air over the horizontal stabiler stalls. This is a know problem espexially in T-Tail turboprop aircraft. With ice on the tail, the moment the flaps are dropped you get exactly what happened to the Colgan air flight. This accident was caused by a series of human factors and poor flight deck management. In IFR weather, on approach, talking about being worried and crashing because of ice??????? Bad decisions. If there was that much ice on the wings they should have been blowing the boots or requesting the ATC move them out of that environment quickly. But, planes landed just before and after them with no problem. First rule, FLY THE PLANE! My heart and prayers go out to the families of the crew and passengers. But these accidents need to be avoided and can be with proper training and sterile flight deck procedures. (as they are aupposed to be)

By: Beth Shaw

Beth Shaw — Sat, 16 May 2009 06:44:46 +0000

Thanks Katy – we’ll correct the error.

By: Katy

Katy — Sat, 16 May 2009 04:09:40 +0000

To clarify… In the photo taken of the soccer player in the white unform, that is *A* Rebecca Shaw, but not *THE* Rebecca Shaw that was the First Captain on flight 3407.

That is a photo of a college freshman from Ohio.

I see why the mistake was made, but it isn’t her.

Just a heads up.

By: Katy

Katy — Sat, 16 May 2009 03:55:57 +0000

That picture with the girl in the white soccer uniform that says “Geneva” is not Rebecca. Just so you know. You may want to take it down. She was my best friend for 16 years, and that is not her.

By: scott strasbaugh

scott strasbaugh — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:37:27 +0000

As an Atp rated pilot I can argue it was the accumilation of several factor that caused the crash.The most Obvious problems were the captains incompetence by inadherence to simple stall recovery techniques that would have saved them from there mistake of letting the airspeed diminish too low in the first place.The inexperienced 1st officer didnt call the captain out on his poor piloting keeping them on the road straight to the crash site.