USA Part 121 is unbelievably fucked up

[Colonel]

[Colonel]

Your first clue is that after Colgan 3407 - an accident with two ATP's on board - the FAA
gets new legislation (named after it) requiring ATP's for part 121.

Hold on a second. The two accident pilots both already had ATP's - and were trained
the FAA way. Something's fishy here.

Then we look at the FAA ATP PTS for stall recovery which is all obviously wrong.

1) you don't "push forward" - let go of the goddamned stick/control column and
allow the elevators and ailerons to trail. Unload the wing and allow the nose to
drop to it's trimmed airspeed.

2) yaw is tremendously important at high alpha. No emphasis on spin avoidance,
which is insane. After (1) above, you want to stop any yaw with rudders or differential
power. This keeps you out of a spin.

3) you don't "raise the flaps". This is insane. You are at high alpha and raising the
flaps is guaranteed to lower your stalling AOA which you will now exceed and
certainly stall.

4) increasing power. This is extremely dangerous. If your last name is Holland
or Hoover, go for it. But with props, the asymmetric nature of the power from the
rotating cylinder of air around the aircraft, is guaranteed to cause yaw from a
number of different sources that any PPL ought to be able to educate an ATP on.
Jet engines mounted close to the fuselage are less likely to induce yawing but
still, adding power is a double-edged sword left to the pro's, who frankly will
never find themselves in this situation.

5) pull back. This is insane. Secondary stall, anyone? If you want something
really bad to happen with an NLF wing and you want to instantly rotate to a
vertical downline, follow this advice.

6) minimum loss of 100' altitude. Where the fuck did this come from?

Reading the above, it's easy to conclude that the bureaucrats were trying to
kill as many pilots and passengers as they could. One has to wonder why no
murder charges were laid after Colgan 3407. Oh yeah, they were too busy
requiring ATP's. Redundantly.

[Nark]

The second I saw Dan Gryder I stopped watching. He is the equivalent of the CAP around the airport. He likes the smell of his own farts.

He’s not wrong if he mentioned that the accident wouldn’t have been prevented with the new legislation requiring ATP’s.

Having thousands of hours does not make a bad pilot better. They’re still bad pilots.

[Slick Goodlin]

I always felt like some test pilots scared the hell out of themselves in that NASA twotter in ice then suddenly all stalls in ice must be tail stalls. Physics didn’t change and I don’t remember a trend of airplanes mysteriously falling out of the sky looking for an explanation but I do remember suddenly being handed a bunch of training on the subject at the time. I seem to remember recommended tail stall recovery being to retract flaps and pull back on the yoke, much like what the Colgan pilots did. Whether that was on purpose we’ll never know.

[Colonel]

Between the stick shaker and the low airspeed, it was pretty obvious this was an ordinary high alpha wing stall.

Having thousands of hours does not make a bad pilot better. They’re still bad pilots.

True. Pilots with inferior training either teach themselves what they need to, over time on the job, or they don’t.

Others simply lack the aptitude and character. Sorry if that’s elitist but it’s true.

[Nark]

In 121 we never push the boundaries of standard, which is good… but if your experience is only in 121 you don’t have a depth to draw from when you are no longer in the boundaries of standard flying.

[Colonel]

Indeed.

On the subject of Dan Gryder … I will admit that he is a strange dude you might not enjoy the company of. You know. An idiot.

However I might point out that over the decades, it pains me to admit that I can learn from idiots. I know, what does that make me?

You can also learn valuable lessons from people that you don’t like very much. Or that don’t like you very much.

For example, Arlo Speer hates me deeply - he thinks I’m the AntiChrist and perhaps he is right - but gosh, he sure taught me a lot. He gave me valuable insight into the minds of people who wanted Canadian tanks to open fire on peaceful protesters in Ottawa, for example.

[mcrit]

….he thinks I’m the AntiChrist and perhaps he is right …

Nope; Klaus Schwab is the anti-Christ…

….you on the other hand are just aviation’s version of Sheldon Cooper…

[Squaretail]

1) you don't "push forward" - let go of the goddamned stick/control column

I just found something out, in a lot of Russian planes, there's a weird level on the control column. Its a knuckle rapper. Apparently the engineers felt a stick shaker was too subtle for pilots.

[Colonel]

The problem with a hard push forward is that you can see negative G which isn’t helping.

Sometimes pilots just need to stop doing terrible things to airplanes. The guy flying Colgan 3407, after the airspeed bled off with the power off, pulled back so hard he snap rolled +2G into the ground.

Recent accidents involving Atlas and others involve the pilots applying hundreds of pounds of force to the controls.

Within seconds, his sustained inputs on the control column disconnected the autopilot and pitched the plane over to nearly 50 degrees nose down, sending the 767 diving toward the ground from 6,000 feet. The sudden transition to a dive pulled the pilots up out of their seats and sent the GIF vector swinging up over their heads, creating an extremely disorienting sensation of tumbling backwards. Only now did Captain Blakely — himself extremely disoriented by the sudden maneuver — look up and try to figure out what was going on. He immediately looked at his attitude indicator, saw that they were in a dive, and pulled back on his control column to climb. But he never ensured a positive transfer of control, and as he tried desperately to pull up, First Officer Aska continued to push the nose down — the pilots were fighting each other!

I’m not sure that makes the airplane fly better.

All of these guys have stuff in common.

1) they have ATPs
2) they have thousands of hours
3) they were trained the FAA way
4) they have little aptitude for flying