The NTSB has published an animation recreating the last minutes of the flight leading up to the crash. Aircraft is seen in chase view with main instrument settings at the bottom of the screen and cockpit crew conversation transcript printed near the aircraft.
For those interested I suggest viewing the video first just looking at the plane in flight and reading crew comments as events unfold. Next look at it again paying close attention to the ASI (air speed indicator, bottom left) as well as the "stick shaker" in the middle.
What the animation shows is pretty appalling. There was no equipment malfunction, the crew simply failed to properly monitor their air speed and let the aircraft stall. An aircraft "stalls" when there is insufficient airflow to generate lift, causing it to fall down. As with most modern airliners the Dash 8's autopilot is programmed to compensate for human error -to a certain point- but in this instance it did not have enough altitude to play with and could not recover.
It is not up to us to determine the extent of the airline's responsibility in this accident, or even if the airline is responsible at all, but one is left to wonder about the level of training received by the crew in operating this type of aircraft. The Dash 8 is enjoying growing popularity among regional carriers and has an excellent reputation in the industry, but is also known to be somewhat tricky to fly at low speed due to its narrow wing and "T-tail" rear end, which are designed for speed. Because of this, special care must be be exercised by the crew at monitoring air speed during final approach, especially in weather prone to cause icing, something that wasn't done in this case, resulting in a tail stall.
It is even more difficult to understand considering that their attention was not being distracted by some other problem as was often the case in other notorious accidents caused by crew inattention, such as Eastern Airlines Flight 401 and United Flight 173. Leading edge icing did occur but that was to be expected, and it did not significantly affect the aircraft's flight characteristics since it is designed to deal with it efficiently. The icing however prompted the crew to launch into a discussion unrelated to actually flying the plane during a critical phase of the flight (final approach), and they lost track of their air speed until it was too late. I'm having difficulty understanding how an experienced pilot would allow himself to be distracted by a casual conversation when his aircraft is in a "dirty" configuration (flaps and landing gear down) and thus prone to lose speed at a significant rate.
For its part the manufacturer of the aircraft, Bombardier Aerospace, has said that it was considering setting the stick shaker threshold at a slightly higher speed, depending on the aircraft's current configuration, to alert pilots of impending tail stall, and will advise the FAA to enact more stringent training standards, including training sessions at the manufacturer's own facilities in Canada, for the many airlines operating the Dash 8.
[video=youtube;lxywEE1kK6I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxywEE1kK6I[/video]
Note: HOT-1 is the Captain, HOT-2 is the First Officer and it has nothing to do with their looks
, it's simply NTSB lingo for identified cockpit crew voices on CVR transcripts. CAM is cockpit area monitor which picks up all cockpit sounds of any source, and RDO is radio com from accident aircraft.
