WASHINGTON — Colgan Air pilots said Thursday that the airline's inappropriate

training might have influenced Capt. Marvin Renslow's fatal decision to raise the nose of

Continental Connection Flight 3407, which then spun out of control and crashed to the ground,

killing 50 last February in Clarence.

Colgan's training emphasized maintaining a plane's altitude during a potential stall, four

pilots for the regional airline that operated the flight for Continental told The Buffalo

News. They said that contradicted what they previously had learned as pilots.

The four pilots, all speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs, said

Colgan taught pilots to react to stall warnings by maintaining altitude, even though safety

experts increasingly teach that the nose should be lowered and the altitude reduced slightly

to build the aircraft's speed.

Documents filed with the National Transportation Safety Board confirm the pilots'

contention. Most importantly, a Colgan training manual instructs pilots to "maintain

altitude."

Several safety experts said that was the wrong approach.

"Pitch up and maintaining altitude ... is contrary to what I was taught as an aviator,"

said Steven Chealander, a former military and American Airlines pilot who was the safety board

member dispatched to Buffalo at the time of the crash.

Chealander, who is no longer on the safety board, said he was speaking generally and did

not want to discuss the Colgan crash, because the probable cause of the accident will not be

revealed until the agency completes its work and releases its report in February.

"Negative training' But another source with knowledge of the

investigation said he expects that Colgan's "negative training" — essentially training

pilots to do the wrong thing — will be one of the factors cited in the agency's final

report on the crash.

Joe Williams, a spokesman for Colgan, said he could not respond to questions about the

airline's training until Monday. A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration also said

The News, which contacted the agency about this story at 2:11 p.m. Thursday, did not give the

agency adequate time to respond.

The Colgan pilots said the training policy — which the FAA had approved — has

since been reversed and that the airline's pilot training has vastly improved in recent

months.

But they also said the airline's poor stall recovery training in years past might have been

one of the factors that led to the crash in Clarence.

"Our training for this situation was a joke," one Colgan pilot said. "They stressed that

the way to recover from this sort of thing was to try not to lose altitude. That's all they

trained. ... What they told you to do is counter to what you're supposed to do."

The Colgan pilots stressed that several factors could have influenced Renslow's fatal

decision to pull back on the plane's yoke in order to raise its nose.

The safety board investigation found he had spent the evening before the flight in a crew

lounge at Newark Airport, meaning he could have been fatigued.

He also had been shown a training video on tail plane icing that might have led him to

believe that the plane was in a tail stall. Pulling back on the yoke would have been the

correct response in that situation.

Then again, the airline's emphasis on maintaining altitude to prevent a stall would have no

doubt been fresh in his mind, said the pilot who called Colgan's training "a joke."

"You're trained to pull back" on the yoke, that pilot said. "So what are you going to do in

that situation? You'll do what Marvin did."

The pilots interviewed stressed that their point of view was not just based on their

experiences, but also on documents filed with the safety board as it completes its

investigation of the Clarence crash.

The Air Line Pilots Association, in a recent submission to the safety board, said pilots

were told during training that they would need to "hold or increase pitch" — that is,

steady or raise the plane's nose — to pass their flight tests.

And a report filed by the safety board's operations group investigating the Clarence crash

also noted that sources it interviewed confirmed that Colgan's stall training focused on

maintaining altitude.

"It was stated in several interviews that during the stall recovery exercises for initial

simulator training, the candidates were instructed to maintain an assigned altitude and

complete the recovery procedures while not deviating more than 100 feet above or below the

assigned altitude," that report said.

Standard abandoned That goal stemmed in part from an FAA

edict that emphasized keeping the altitude steady when recovering from a stall, the operations

group said.

The FAA abandoned that standard in November 2008 and now emphasizes building speed as

central to stall recovery, said Capt. John Cox of Safety Operating Systems, a Washington,

D.C., consultancy.

The old standard "has been a problem in the industry for decades," Cox said. "There has

been a lot of discussion and an effort under way to get away from the zero altitude loss

philosophy."

The modern-day philosophy is that "you have to accept some altitude loss to get the plane

flying," Cox said.

That's because of the very nature of an aerodynamic stall, where the plane is flying so

slowly that its wings will not keep the plane aloft.

To build the speed needed to regain control, pilots not only must move the engines to full

power, but also must point the nose downward temporarily to allow gravity to give the plane a

boost in speed, aviation experts said.

"I can understand that the pilot does not want to lose altitude too fast, but at the same

time, you have to make sure the airplane has flying airspeed," said Scott T. Glaser of Defiant

Co., a California aviation consultancy that specializes in "upset recovery training," or

flying when things go wrong.

A former investigator for the safety board, meanwhile, stressed that other airlines

followed the FAA guidance and put too much emphasis on maintaining altitude.

"It does go against the way you are taught to recover from a stall in a small plane," he

said of pilots' early training.

In a true stall, he said, adding power alone will not be enough to recover control.

"You have to reduce the angle of attack," he said.

Asked if the training requirement could have contributed to the Colgan crash, the former

safety board investigator said, "You might say yes because they were not trained to positively

lower the nose, but no one ever was trained to pull up the nose the way (Renslow) did."

FAA also draws blame After the crash, Colgan's training

program was revamped to emphasize the importance of airspeed in stall recovery, the airline's

pilots said.

In addition, they said Colgan pilots now receive hands-on training in every element of the

stall recovery system, including the "stick pusher," an automated stall recovery devise that

Renslow overrode as he tried to control the plane on his own. Renslow never had such hands-on

training in that device.

While lauding the changes made by Colgan, another pilot for the airline blamed the outdated

training before the crash not only on the airline, but on the FAA, which must approve training

manuals and other elements of every airline's pilot training program.

"I have old training procedures [that] clearly state that the pilot must maintain altitude

while in a stall," that pilot said. "We objected to it several times, but it was not changed

until after the crash. The FAA was fully aware of this as they sat in our training events."

Another Colgan pilot said the airline's approach to training at the time did not focus on

ensuring that pilots knew how to react in case of trouble.

"It was all just about checking the box so it was done and accomplished," that pilot said.

A fourth pilot agreed, saying, "It doesn't do a good job in training you to deal with

real-world situations."

Told of all this, Mike Loftus, a former Continental Airlines pilot who lost his daughter,

Maddie, in the Clarence crash, said it's been clear for some time that the crew of Flight 3407

did not receive adequate training.

"I never really faulted Renslow or [First Officer Rebecca L.] Shaw for this," Loftus said.

"They were never trained or given the tools to do it the right way — and maybe they were

even led to do it the wrong way."

Year in Review: Flight 3407

News staff reporter Tom Precious contributed to this report.