"Jessica" wrote in message
...
xyzzy wrote:
On May 13, 2:14 pm, Ron Garret wrote:
In article
,



bod43 wrote:
On 13 May, 12:57, Robert Moore wrote:
James Robinson wrote
The drop in airspeed was unnoticed, and the stall seemed
to catch them completely by surprise.
I wonder what the stall warning was doing all of this time?
Bob Moore
It appears that it was the stall warning (stick shaker) that the
captain (pilot flying) reacted to.
The reaction was to immediately pull back pretty hard
quickly precipitating an actual stall. 80% power was also
selected immediately. The stick was held back pretty much
until impact.
This boggles my mind. I'm just a PP but throughout my training I've had
it drilled in to me to lower the nose on an impending stall. How can
any pilot not know that, let alone one who is getting paid to fly
passengers?

It may boggle the mind of a PP like you (or me for that matter) who
seldom or never flies in icing conditions. However in icing
conditions a tail stall is possible, and the recovery from that is
exactly what this flight crew did. Yes, I know the Q400 is alleged
not to be suspectible to this but the captain had just come from a
type that is, and the FO spent a good part of the five minutes before
the crash chatting about how she feared icing, had never experienced
it before, and how would she handle it, etc. So then after chatting
and worrying about icing, they got something that felt/looked like it
could be an ice-induced tail stall and since it was on their minds
they did the recovery from that. They acted on instinct and it was
the wrong instinct. IMO.

Perhaps that is exactly what happened. But their indication was the stick
shaker (aircraft stall warning system), which only indicates wing stalls,
not tail stalls. Regardless of type, the only correct response to the
stick shaker/stick pusher was to perform normal (wing) stall recovery.
Instinct should lower the nose immediately when the stick starts shaking.

Maybe. But, if the Q400 has a stick pusher, then it could really confuse
the issue--take a look at the FAA/NASA video on tailplane icing at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...23060735779946

Here is a link for considerable additional info, although it does appear to
include the FDR data which is linked elsewhere in this thread:
http://aircrewbuzz.com/2009/02/dash-...o-buffalo.html

We really don't know whether they actually had tailplane ice at the time,
not whether they did not, and we never will know because that sort of
evidence would not reasonably survive a crash.