The date is set.

[BoeingBobby]

Next time I will have Gabe come in 6 weeks early and he can go through the entire ground school course. That way when we get in the sim he will have a better understanding of the proper calls and we will run the checklists.

[Evan]

Good God, man, your the one relentlessly pounding that they should be running some uber specific checklist and that training on said checklists is the problem.

Yes, part of the problem. Those things are there (if they are there) for a reason that has to do with the real-world limitations of the human mind.

Six seconds...(and I still wonder why the check airspeed every few seconds on short final OR while leveling, dropping flaps, gear, and speeding up propellors...

Time is a relative thing. Things like confusion, panic and tunnel vision can really make time fly (and Colgan 3407 had healthy airspeed when the stick shaker came on, because, well, read the manual,,,).

[3WE]

***real-world limitations of the human mind.***

Almost all aircraft stall when a relentless pull up is made.

So, now that we have hired you, let's RETRAIN you away from your prior job flying boxes in a Caravan to now flying a Q-400.

Please do your best to memorize the new stall checklist and forget the old one.

[3WE]

***6 weeks***edit, 8 weeks per BB’s comment below.

Eight weeks of learning stuff...INTENSIVE WEEKS...

I also bet it's designed really really well for optimum safety- lot's of smart people probably contributed to its development.

But, wow, eight weeks of that might cause someone to forget a basic thing or two.

That being said, I will limit my well-informed demands for curriculum revisions and procedural changes to amateur aviation forums.

[BoeingBobby]

Initial training on the 747/400/-8 is 8 weeks. Pretty intensive ground school followed by an FAA oral and then comes the sim sessions and a type ride. It is kind of like opening up your mouth to a fire hose if you have never flown big iron before.

[3WE]

F.A.O.:Gabe

***Stick shaker sounded, Gabe lowered the nose about 5 degrees and let the speed come back and away we went.***

***How in the Holy 47-F-bomb[active form]-expletive Hell did Gabriel have any idea whatsoever at all how to handle this occurrence? This occurrence which, too often seems to be the demise of modern aeroplanies... Did he really memorize the SSRP from the QRH and recite it as he did it...some tweak to the auto-pilot? Meh, probably just due to him reading parlour-talk aviation fora all the time.***

I was hoping you would comment specifically about your super human ability to address this issue, even though you lack the 8 hours of training that Bobby mentions...[you do briefly mention it, but very little discussion].

No digs at Bobby (though, maybe some at someone else)...just my addiction that using a little basic fundamental knowledge in context is not a bad thing...

[Gabriel]

I was hoping you would comment specifically about your super human ability to address this issue. [you do briefly mention it, but very little discussion].

No digs at Bobby (though, maybe some at someone else)...just my addiction that using a little basic fundamental knowledge in context is not a bad thing...

Yes, I did mention it briefly. Like this briefly:

So now I pull with both hands, manage to arrest the descent and then.... stickshaker!!! That was completely unexpected, took me by surprise, totally off guard, and I had never experienced a stickshaker before except in a PC sim which I have not used in several years (the airplanes I used to fly have stall horns, not stickshaker). What happened next is hard to explain. BB says that I lowered the nose 5 degrees, and I believe him, but I was not really paying attention to the pitch at that point, and lowering the pitch 5 degrees was never in my mind. I was "thinking" something else, but "think" is not the right word because it was not an active rational process. I don't want to say that it was an instinct either, and I don't believe it was a memorized muscle response since it had been years since my last approach to stall and never in response to a stick-shaker. It was more an "intellectual" automatic response to something that I knew very well what it was and knew very well what needed to be done without the need to "think" or reason about it thanks to the intellectual effort and mental "training" that had been extensively done in advance. Despite the surprise, startle, lack of previous exposure and whatever adverse factors you can imagine, I instantly reacted relieving a bit of back pressure to stop the stick-shaker. When it did, I pulled back a bit again. I expected the stickshaker start again. I was looking for the angle of attack that is in the limit of the stickshaker, and I expected to come into and out of the stickshaker a couple of times while I modulated the elevator around that angle of attack. But the stickshaker never activated again. Now I looked back to the attitude indicator and smoothly brought the nose back to 15 degrees. We were alive.

I am highlighting what I consider a key part of not how I did it, but how did I get to do it. And a cue of that highlighted part can be found here.

[Evan]

So now I pull with both hands, manage to arrest the descent and then.... stickshaker!!! That was completely unexpected, took me by surprise, totally off guard, and I had never experienced a stickshaker before except in a PC sim which I have not used in several years (the airplanes I used to fly have stall horns, not stickshaker). What happened next is hard to explain. BB says that I lowered the nose 5 degrees, and I believe him, but I was not really paying attention to the pitch at that point, and lowering the pitch 5 degrees was never in my mind. I was "thinking" something else, but "think" is not the right word because it was not an active rational process. I don't want to say that it was an instinct either, and I don't believe it was a memorized muscle response since it had been years since my last approach to stall and never in response to a stick-shaker. It was more an "intellectual" automatic response to something that I knew very well what it was and knew very well what needed to be done without the need to "think" or reason about it thanks to the intellectual effort and mental "training" that had been extensively done in advance. Despite the surprise, startle, lack of previous exposure and whatever adverse factors you can imagine, I instantly reacted relieving a bit of back pressure to stop the stick-shaker. When it did, I pulled back a bit again. I expected the stickshaker start again. I was looking for the angle of attack that is in the limit of the stickshaker, and I expected to come into and out of the stickshaker a couple of times while I modulated the elevator around that angle of attack. But the stickshaker never activated again. Now I looked back to the attitude indicator and smoothly brought the nose back to 15 degrees. We were alive.

This is the part that really interests me. For years we have been dealing with the question: how could a trained pilot do something so fundamentally wrong...?

What happened next is hard to explain... I was not really paying attention to the pitch at that point, and lowering the pitch 5 degrees was never in my mind. I was "thinking" something else, but "think" is not the right word because it was not an active rational process.

I'm not at all surprised to read that, based on everything I've learned about human factors. You were quite suddenly disoriented by the unexpected and in a state of degraded situational awareness. Despite your endless manifestos on pitch reduction you were "not really paying attention to the pitch at that point, and lowering the pitch 5 degrees was never in my mind." In other words, the solution is not about rational understanding of fundamentals, since the mind has little if any opportunity to rationalize at that moment, but rather "an "intellectual" automatic response to something that I knew very well what it was and knew very well what needed to be done without the need to "think" or reason about it thanks to the intellectual effort and mental "training" that had been extensively done in advance."

If so, the question would be: how do we equip pilots with that "intellectual automatic response", as you call it, before we give them access to the cockpit?

Must they all be required to study aeronautical engineering for four years? Should a CTPL require certain intellectual standards? (I wouldn't necessarily oppose that if it were practical, given the responsibility involved)

What is clear to me is that being a crack aggie pilot with flawless fundamental instincts on an average day does not always save you in this what-happened-next-is-hard-to-explain zone.

There is something more that you have, that certain pilots have, that is missing in other pilots, and that isn't just a rational understanding of fundamentals.

Hopefully part of that is a humble awareness of the limitations of the human mind under stress and the paramount importance of being intellectually prepared on aeronautics and disciplined on the procedural defenses and CRM that are there to supplant a failure of clear, rational thinking.

At the very least, [some of us] can wake up to the fact that the recurring problem isn't simply about rational understanding of fundamentals...

[BoeingBobby]

You know what they say around the Seattle area? Fly it like you stole it!

[Evan]

You know what they say around the Seattle area? Fly like you stole it!

As I recall, that didn't end well.

[3WE]

At the very least, [some of us] can wake up to the fact that the recurring problem isn't simply about rational understanding of fundamentals...

Some of us think that remembering that almost all aircraft can stall at slow speeds and strong nose up inputs and connecting similarities between Cubs and 777s is reckless cowboy improvisation.

You think that our ATP stallers were thinking that they were above 60 knots and therefore probably not stalled?

[BoeingBobby]

Some of us think that remembering that almost all aircraft can stall at slow speeds and strong nose up inputs and connecting similarities between Cubs and 777s is reckless cowboy improvisation.

You think that our ATP stallers were thinking that they were above 60 knots and therefore probably not stalled?

No way to answer that one I'm afraid.

[Gabriel]

This is the part that really interests me. For years we have been dealing with the question: how could a trained pilot do something so fundamentally wrong...?

I'm not at all surprised to read that, based on everything I've learned about human factors. You were quite suddenly disoriented by the unexpected and in a state of degraded situational awareness. Despite your endless manifestos on pitch reduction you were "not really paying attention to the pitch at that point, and lowering the pitch 5 degrees was never in my mind." In other words, the solution is not about rational understanding of fundamentals, since the mind has little if any opportunity to rationalize at that moment, but rather "an "intellectual" automatic response to something that I knew very well what it was and knew very well what needed to be done without the need to "think" or reason about it thanks to the intellectual effort and mental "training" that had been extensively done in advance."

You are very wrong, in many ways. At least that's what I think.

First of all, I never say "pitch reduction". I say "AoA reduction" which is a related but different animal. It that thread that I linked in my previous post (last word "here" is the link), I explain how it is a misconception that "you need to shove the nose down" or even reduce the pitch at all (which was the concern with the stall procedure I was proposing because, you know, if you lower the nose you are going down), procedure that is almost identically to what was ultimately later implemented in the airline industry at great replacing the previous one of "aim for this pitch and this thrust" that was the norm before and which was so flawed) and I explained how you can reduce AoA and increase pitch, climb rate and climb gradient at the same time.

Which take us to the next point: lack of understanding. Lack of understanding has EVERYTHING to do. As you have just proven yourself. My not paying attention to the pitch was not lack of awareness, rather the opposite. I had to reduce the AoA at least barely enough to make the stick-shaker stop, and since ground clearance was critical, that "at least" should be as close to "as much" as possible. And that was my aim. And pitch has nothing to do with that. When the stick-shaker stopped I was still sinking so I knew (without need to think about it) that I had tot keep the AoA as close as possible to the stick-shaker onset. Since there is no AoA indicator or anything to indicate if you are at the stickshaker onset, the only way to do that is to pull up a little bit until the stickshaker starts again, then release a bit of back pressure to make it stop, and keep modulating the elevator in that way around the stickshaker onset AoA. Until when? I will tell you, again. When the stick-shaker stopped, I pulled up a bit again looking for the point where the stickshaker would start again, the plane started to pitch up and started to gain altitude. At that point, not sinking anymore, with runway still ahead, ground clearance was not a concern anymore, obstacle clearance was not a concern wither, I didn't need to extract the last drop of usable lift anymore, so THEN I looked up to the attitude indicator and kept pitching smoothly up to my goal of 15 degrees. That is PERFECT situational awareness and PERFECT performance on my side.

I had never flown a 747 before. I had never had a stick-shaker before. What the heck, I had never almost stalled my rented Tomahawk on liftoff before.
How did I do it? How did I know what to do? UNDERSTANDING!

As you said, in that moment there is not time to think, there is no time for a rational process. But it was my KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING, that was built before the event, that let me manage this event like a boss. And AoA and stalls is fundamentals that applies for my rented Tomahawk and for the Boeing 747-200, so yes, it was understanding about the fundamentals of flight.

How do we build this into pilots? We tech them the fundamentals since hour zero, we make them practice and interact with these fundamentals, and we keep doing just that when they have 10K hours and are flying a 747-8i. Type specific procedures? Sure! Just make sure that these procedures are not against the fundamentals because then they don;t work, like the previous stalls procedures.

Other than sustained panic or lack of real ingrained understanding, I don't understand what the Colgan and AF pilots did. And if it is panic, then nothing will help except enough exposure to have chance to control the panic to a situation that will be more familiar. But in that case, exposure to fundamentals or to type specific procedures (which should be pretty compatible) would work the same.

Many accidents are caused (or at least are contributed) by not applying the correct procedures or mismanaging aircraft systems.Most them could have been saved EVEN AFTER THAT SCREW UP with fundamentals that are cross-type universals. And we have many examples of crews that did just that: several UAS that were just flown through, these pilots that mismanaged the IRS and were left with no primary instrument (just backup steam gauge ones), etc... Turkish, Asiana, Colgan, AF, Emirates all of them screwed up with systems. All of them could have been avoided altogether by following procedures and understanding type-specific systems. All of them could have been saved with universal proper flight skills that apply to a Tomahawk and to a Boeing 747-200. All of them failed at both.

I want pilots that follow the procedures. Not procedure followers that happen to be pilots. That, until we have the officially pilot-less plane, no the manned planes with no pilots flying it that we had in the cases above.

[BoeingBobby]

You have more than likely chosen a better career for yourself already Gabriel, however you would have made an excellent pilot, and I would have been happy to have had you as a First Officer/Co-Captain.

[Evan]

You are very wrong, in many ways. At least that's what I think.

Gabriel, you're confusing me. In most respects I agree with what you wrote here, but...

First of all, I never say "pitch reduction". I say "AoA reduction" which is a related but different animal.

Yes, which, in this case was achieved by... reducing pitch, right?

I had to reduce the AoA at least barely enough to make the stick-shaker stop, and since ground clearance was critical, that "at least" should be as close to "as much" as possible. And that was my aim. And pitch has nothing to do with that. When the stick-shaker stopped I was still sinking so I knew (without need to think about it) that I had tot keep the AoA as close as possible to the stick-shaker onset. Since there is no AoA indicator or anything to indicate if you are at the stickshaker onset, the only way to do that is to pull up a little bit until the stickshaker starts again, then release a bit of back pressure to make it stop, and keep modulating the elevator in that way around the stickshaker onset AoA.

How is this not about managing pitch? I said reduce pitch to avoid stall (not thrust the yoke forward), which you did. Then you increased pitch to avoid sinking (not relentlessly pulled up), and ultimately to climb, flying in that sweet spot just below critical angle. I get that and I admire the hell out of that. That is flying at its best. But that still has everything to do with pitch.

That is PERFECT situational awareness and PERFECT performance on my side.

Yes, prefect performance, but I define 'situational awareness' as knowing both what is happening and why it is happening, and you didn't know why you were suddenly in that situation. This is not at all a criticism. I don't expect any pilot to have PERFECT situational awareness in situations like this. That's the point. That's the reason CRM and procedures (where they exist) are so important to the pilots, the plane and the people in back.

I also recognize that, in your stickshaker encounter, you did follow correct procedure by managing pitch (and thus AoA) as the first priority. My comments on procedure and CRM are directed at the subsequent attempt to stabilize and return, but as I've already said, are also not a criticism given the circumstances here.

But this is what interests me:

How do we build this into pilots? We tech them the fundamentals since hour zero...

We do this. Renslow was a certified flight instructor.

...we make them practice and interact with these fundamentals, and we keep doing just that when they have 10K hours and are flying a 747-8i.

Hopefully we are doing this as well. I thought that was what SIMs and upset recovery training programs were for.

Type specific procedures? Sure! Just make sure that these procedures are not against the fundamentals because then they don;t work, like the previous stalls procedures.

I'm not aware of any procedures that are against fundamentals. The previous approach-to-stall procedures were not really against fundamentals, they just incorrectly prioritized things and neglected to fully recognize the hazards of pitch coupling at low airspeeds.

Other than sustained panic or lack of real ingrained understanding, I don't understand what the Colgan and AF pilots did. And if it is panic, then nothing will help except enough exposure to have chance to control the panic to a situation that will be more familiar. But in that case, exposure to fundamentals or to type specific procedures (which should be pretty compatible) would work the same.

Both Gabriel, both. But my point is and has always been that, until pilots universally appreciate the bewildering effect disorientation has on the human mind of even the best of them, and embrace a solid, practiced command of instant recall procedures, QRH procedures and CRM as their best defense, but rather place faith in their ability to improvise with a clear head, these unthinkable accidents will continue to happen.

I want pilots that follow the procedures. Not procedure followers that happen to be pilots.

I agree 100%. You know that.

I want pilots who have an intellectual understanding of aeronautics and human factors as well as crack flying skills.

I believe that is what you are and why you did so well in dealing with a disorienting situation.