Preflight transcript reveals ailing co-pilot
Had Cold On Day Of Crash
WASHINGTON— The co-pilot of Continental Connection Flight 3407 said she was so sick that she didn’t want to fly — and groused about her pay and employer — in the moments before her doomed plane left Newark, N. J., for Buffalo.
“Oh, I’m ready to be in the hotel room,” the co-pilot, Rebecca L. Shaw, said shortly before takeoff, according to a new transcript of cockpit conversations that indicates she sniffled repeatedly before and during the flight.
The transcript, released Monday by the National Transportation Safety Board, also quotes Shaw criticizing Colgan Air, the Continental subcontractor that managed the flight, which crashed in Clarence Center in February, claiming 50 lives.
“I feel like Colgan walks all over me,” said Shaw, 24. “This company treats me like crap so much.”
The new transcript details conversations between Shaw and Capt. Marvin Renslow, the plane’s pilot, before the plane left Newark. It also inserts Shaw’s sniffles into the previously released transcript of the cockpit conversation during the flight.
New flight simulations also released Monday reiterate the safety board’s earlier indication that pilot fatigue and error might have been responsible for the crash — and the transcript sheds further light on just why the crew members of Flight 3407 may not have been at their best that night.
Federal Aviation Administration regulations say that pilots should not fly when they are ill and that the captain is responsible for enforcing the rule.
But the transcript shows Shaw fighting off what appears to be a bad cold as the plane waited to take off — and Renslow making no effort to stop her from flying while sick.
“Well, this is one of those times that if I felt like this when I was at home, there’s no way I would have come all the way out here,” Shaw said. “But now that I’m out here — ”
“You might as well,” Renslow replied.
Shaw — who said in the transcript that she made $15,800 in her first year at Colgan — then implied that she was reluctant to call in sick because she would have had to pay for a hotel room in Newark.
“I mean, if I call in sick now I’ve got to put myself in a hotel until I feel better. You know, we’ll see how how it feels flying,” Shaw said in the transcript. “If the pressure’s just too much I, you know, I could always call in tomorrow; at least I’m in a hotel on the company’s buck, but we’ll see. I’m pretty tough.”
Instead of suggesting that Shaw take off work because of her illness, Renslow told her she could “kill it with, you know, a bunch of OJ or a bunch of vitamin C.”
In addition to complaining about her illness, Shaw griped about working at Colgan, a Manassas, Va.-based regional carrier that handles smaller flights for several major airlines.
She said her husband, an Army reservist, made more money in one weekend of drills than she did in an entire pay cycle. And she said she was in a dispute with the company over $200 in retroactive pay that she believed she was owed from a raise she had received.
“Two hundred bucks to a FO [first officer] is a lot of money,” she said, shortly before saying: “I feel like Colgan walks all over me.”
The young first officer then complained that a company official had refused to respond to her request that her vacation be moved to a time when her husband could also take time off.
Joe Williams, a spokesman for Colgan’s parent, Pinnacle Airlines, said, “I cannot speculate on why she did not call [in sick] — the bottom line is that pilots are expected to report rested, fit and ready for duty.”
After media reports that Shaw earned about $16,000 last year, Williams said in mid-May that Shaw’s annual salary was more than $23,000. But on Monday he confirmed that would have been her salary this year — and acknowledged she made $15,800 last year.
Other documents released Monday indicate that Shaw apparently was feeling well earlier in the day of the doomed flight.
She had taken a red-eye flight from her home in Seattle to Newark the night before she was scheduled to work and textmessaged her husband at 5:29 a. m. to say that she was going to sleep.
Other Colgan employees said they saw her sleeping in the crew lounge at Newark Airport. And at 11:05 a. m., she textmessaged her husband again, saying: “I feel soooo good, I took a nice 6 hour nap on the comfy recliner!”
A series of safety board hearings held 2z months ago revealed a series of critical errors that Shaw and Renslow made during the flight.
Shaw, who was responsible for monitoring the plane’s speed, allowed the Dash 8 Q400 to slow to the point where the stall warning system activated.
And Renslow reacted improperly to the stall, pulling back on the plane’s yoke when he should have pushed it forward to gain speed.
Documents released Monday show safety board inspectors re-creating Flight 3407 in a simulator.
When the safety board personnel followed the procedures in the plane’s manual, the plane was able to recover from the stall. And when the crew did nothing in response to the stall warning in a separate test flight, the automatic stall response system righted the plane’s course.
But when a safety board pilot pulled back on the yoke just as Renslow did, the simulated flight — which needed to gain speed to recover from the stall — slowed down even more.
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