Embraer 145 questions

[TeeVee]

I also need to understand how a different young, less experienced dude's response to a stick shaker is to pull up "as hard as you can" to a 30 degree nose up attitude.

wasn't he fresh out of flying a saab or some of a/c where the correct procedure for a tail stall WAS yanking back on the stick? not positive but i think i read that somewhere...

[3WE]

That Colgan Air? Easy...the dude got scared when the plane stalled and he pulled up.

Kind of like when a car starts to hydroplane during rain and people hit the brakes as hard as they can.

But I like to think that Greyhound bus drivers, who are professionals and have extra training, would know that slamming on the brakes is the worst thing to do. However, you are correct that that is likely the explanation.

As to your other smart-assed comment about the FO (I'm being complimentary), I would ask: Are you Putt-4-Par?

[SYDCBRWOD]

They may be young pilots, but that doesn't mean their less professional. Most graduates of my school end up at ExpressJet flying the ERJ-145 and I can tell you not only do we have top notch flight training with the degree and college courses to back it up, ExpressJet has one of the best training regiments for their new hires.

Didn't comment on their professionalism, but the experience they have had is most likely going to be less than somebody in command of a heavy. Experience does breed a number of things including occasionally complacency and contempt, but it also does give a pilot a chance to experience far more situations and conditions than somebody straight out of training. Generally speaking, a skilled pilot with more hours will be safer than a skilled pilot pretty much straight out of training.

[SYDCBRWOD]

Having fun yet?

(Make no mistake- a good effort to explain things, and excellent explanations too.)

While you are at it- I've always worried about DC-9/MD-80 and ERJ aircraft- that uneven, left-to-right seating arrangement must put a lot of extra strain on the right wing- I'm always scared that it will fail if we were to encouter turbulence at a middle altitude.

LOL, solved by ensuring an extra fat pilot or copilot (depending on layout obviously) ATSB directive AA-34/324?re3^)(

[Apooh]

I also need to understand how a different young, less experienced dude's response to a stick shaker is to pull up "as hard as you can" to a 30 degree nose up attitude.

That Colgan Air? Easy...the dude got scared when the plane stalled and he pulled up.

Kind of like when a car starts to hydroplane during rain and people hit the brakes as hard as they can.

But he should have relied on his co-pilot for guidance. Wait, er, no, the copilot was scared because she had never seen icing like that.

HOWEVER, I am hoping that American Eagle pilots (the airline I am flying) are better than that.

[3WE]

They may be young pilots, but that doesn't mean their less professional. Most graduates of my school end up at ExpressJet flying the ERJ-145 and I can tell you not only do we have top notch flight training with the degree and college courses to back it up, ExpressJet has one of the best training regiments for their new hires.

I'm very glad to hear that.

However, I need to understand how young pilots can sit at FL410 with a 20 degree nose up angle, watching their airpseed decay over a period of a minute or two until the stick shaker starts going off, but then LET the plane stall itself.

I also need to understand how a different young, less experienced dude's response to a stick shaker is to pull up "as hard as you can" to a 30 degree nose up attitude.

What is the screening procedure that separates your pilots from these others, and how, as a passenger, do I know that I will get one of your pilots?

[Tanner_J]

Getting back to the Embraer, it is constantly ranked higher in comfort ratings than the CRJ. It has bigger windows and has a 2-1 configuration, where CRJ's have a 2-2 Configuration.

In general, turbulence will be felt more on a smaller airplane than a large one, but it's not a big deal. They won't fly you through anything too crazy.

They may be young pilots, but that doesn't mean their less professional. Most graduates of my school end up at ExpressJet flying the ERJ-145 and I can tell you not only do we have top notch flight training with the degree and college courses to back it up, ExpressJet has one of the best training regiments for their new hires.



If you want to know anything specific about the 145 PM me, I am currently in a college course specifically tailored to the systems on the ERJ-145 so I have a ton of information and the flight manuals on my desk.

[3WE]

...almost as much stuff as Gabriel posts...

Having fun yet?

(Make no mistake- a good effort to explain things, and excellent explanations too.)

While you are at it- I've always worried about DC-9/MD-80 and ERJ aircraft- that uneven, left-to-right seating arrangement must put a lot of extra strain on the right wing- I'm always scared that it will fail if we were to encouter turbulence at a middle altitude.

[SYDCBRWOD]

What's the relevance of that observation. You didn't even wait to learn what the question was about.

I read the entire thing first - and still struggled to understand why altidude is such a risk.

I'm just saying that atmospheric conditions vary as you climb to different altitudes. That Colgan flight probably wasn't flying in the same conditions as AF447. Which probably explains the "unprofessional behavior". They obviously didn't perceive that they were doing a job full of the same hazard as an international flight.

A Bombardier Q400 has a maximum altitude of 27,000 feet according to that tome of knowledge, Wikipedia. An A330-200 has a service ceiling of 41,500 feet (figure from KC330-200 MRTT). I'd hazard a guess that you'd be safer in an A330 at 35,000 feet than a Q400 at 26,900 feet. You have again jumped in and assumed something that may not be correct. That being the higher you are the more risk you will be in. It very much depends on the aircraft as to the degree of risk or even whether the plane can achieve that altitude. Quite a few aircraft fly a stepped flight profile - as the aircraft burns off fuel it can ascend to higher altitudes. Also, there is a trade off in terms of the length of a flight leg and which altitude it can be operated most economically at. Generally speaking the higher a plane flys the more efficient it becomes, however it would be patently stupid to plan a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet if you were only going 200nm. Air traffic control will also have a large influence over what altitudes can be flown.

Ask a few basic questions and you would have had the answers to your questions.

As for danger at altitude, how about the crash in the Canary Islands. One plane sitting on the runway, the other one laboring to achieve enough height not to ram it. But, then, that was another human error, wasn't it? A guy who wasn't cleared who decided to do it anyway. I mean, if that's going to happen, the passengers are screwed. No amount of safety engineering is of any use when universally-known procedures are simply bypassed. I don't know what the total errors made in that crash were, but I'd call them "unforced" in the sense they use in tennnis.

You are correct and incorrect in what you say here. Sure, human error largely caused the horrific crash, but from that lessons were learned - primarily in Cockpit Resouce Management. The PIC (also the captain) was known to be very overbearing and critical of the junior pilots - he didn't like his decisions being questioned. Nowadays there is supposed to be a very different dynamic in a cockpit that probably would have prevented that incident from occurring in the first place. The copilot would have spoken up and the pilot should now listen and the KLM takeoff either would not have started or would have been aborted.

Amazing how few crashes occur considering the same human brain capacity and training is involved. Hell, who knows, maybe most of those pilots aren't ready to die. That could induce some care and patience.

I don't think anybody on here has told you that pilots or any link in the chain from maintenance, to baggage screening to ATC is infalible. However it is an industry that whilst flawed, does practise the teachings of Demming and strives for continual improvement in most safety areas (some areas seem to be in regression though - crew fatigue for instance). The reason crashes are investigated is to find the reason why and to put into place fixes for the problem. I believe that on the whole the system works well and have no doubt that flying now is safer that in any other decade in the past (backed by statistics).

Considering the figures, 4.874 Billion passengers moved in 2008, compared with 577 deaths in 32 crashes - the odds are miniscule of losing your life.

http://www.aci.aero/cda/aci_common/d...p=1-5-54_666_2__

http://www.aviation-safety.net/statistics/period/stats.php?cat=A1

But you go ahead and keep pointing out how obviously stupid you consider pilots to be "that could induce some care and patience". Incidentally if you were again alluding to the Canary Islands incident, the 'impatience' wasn't due to the KLM pilot wanting to get on the turps early - it was because he was restricted in the flight hours he could do in any one period - you know, one of those pesky safety rules.

[EconomyClass]

What's the relevance of that observation. You didn't even wait to learn what the question was about.

I'm just saying that atmospheric conditions vary as you climb to different altitudes. That Colgan flight probably wasn't flying in the same conditions as AF447. Which probably explains the "unprofessional behavior". They obviously didn't perceive that they were doing a job full of the same hazard as an international flight.

As for danger at altitude, how about the crash in the Canary Islands. One plane sitting on the runway, the other one laboring to achieve enough height not to ram it. But, then, that was another human error, wasn't it? A guy who wasn't cleared who decided to do it anyway. I mean, if that's going to happen, the passengers are screwed. No amount of safety engineering is of any use when universally-known procedures are simply bypassed. I don't know what the total errors made in that crash were, but I'd call them "unforced" in the sense they use in tennnis.

Amazing how few crashes occur considering the same human brain capacity and training is involved. Hell, who knows, maybe most of those pilots aren't ready to die. That could induce some care and patience.

Hmm. Occurs to me we're all lucky that its not so easy to launch an ICBM attack as it is to launch an aircraft.

[TeeVee]

Bad news EC, you are just as dead if you fall out of the sky from 37,000 feet as 200 feet...

and here i thought....

[SYDCBRWOD]

These short jumps don't require flying as high, do they?

Bad news EC, you are just as dead if you fall out of the sky from 37,000 feet as 200 feet...

So, does that mean a different type of difficulty for the less-experienced pilots? Most flight like that will not cross a tropical convergence (at least not flights I'd take).

You mention the ITCZ as though it has single handedly downed a couple of thousand airliners. Here's an idea - don't fly. Take a car (with a much higher risk of being involved in an accident - but don't let logic get in the way here).

Exactly what 'different type of difficulty' are you talking about here? Are you thinking that its less difficult to fly at a lower altitude than a higher one? Are you going to disregard the fact that generally speaking the smaller the aircraft in these regional operators the less hours the pilots probably have? I'd say there's your bigger risk factor - but hey, that's just me

[Apooh]

I prefer ERJs over CRJs (hands down) normally due to the fact that most ERJ 135/140/145s are configured in 1-aisle-2 configuration. ...

That's a very good point.

[EconomyClass]

These short jumps don't require flying as high, do they? So, does that mean a different type of difficulty for the less-experienced pilots? Most flight like that will not cross a tropical convergence (at least not flights I'd take).

To me, flying is not worth doing unless there's some serious distance to the trip or an ocean to be crossed. For instance, I flew to Seattle, but when I wanted to get to Portland from there, I rented a car. Driving to Portland was a breeze (except the first 50 miles or so at rush hour, my departure would have been nicer if I'd toured Seattle for a couple of hours and then headed south).

[AA 1818]

Having flow in RJs 13 times now I can tell you for sure that they're nowhere as rough and as uncomfortable as most people make them out to be. Now if you're over 6' 2" tall or have really long legs, comfort might become an issue on RJ flights longer than an hour.

Turbulence feels just about the same as in any other airliner, and in fact some of my RJ flights have been smoother in say, heat-thermal induced turbulence than a 737.

Lol - 6' 3" here and I must say that it all depends on the aircraft and layout (as you mentioned...). To be quite honest, I prefer ERJs over CRJs (hands down) normally due to the fact that most ERJ 135/140/145s are configured in 1-aisle-2 configuration. While standing, it is a bit cumbersome (at times), it is not horrible. I prefer that arrangement versus a 3-aisle-3 on most A32Xs and 737s. On most CRJs, (as nice as they are as aircraft), most airlines try to cram too many seats on board (so seat pitch is horrible) and you get a 2-aisle-2 layout (which is still more comfortable that a A32X or 737).

As for turbulence, on ERJs, it tends to be a bit more exaggerated than say on a larger aircraft (from what I have experienced), but then again, when an RJ's engines decide to power through a sittutation, you definately feel it.

Another issue with RJs is that they often offer little or no amenities (offered on mainline flights) such as powerports, IFE systems, and/or meal services. I understand that those are currently premiums on mainline carriers, but still...it does affect a decision. Case in point, CO employs the ERJ-145XR on some routes that are rather long (for an RJ, in comparison to other RJs usage at other carriers) and it amazes me there are no/little IFE and the like. But then again, with the sad state of our industry (for the past decade it seems...), we have little if anything to complain about...