Failing at the Fundamentals of Flight

I'VE BEEN WATCHING the activities of the NTSB and its air accident investigation predecessor, the Civil Aeronautics Board, for over 40 years and do not remember reading a finding of probable cause as brutally frank as that recently issued in the loss of the Pinnacle Airlines Bombardier RJ CL-619-2B19 that crashed on Oct. 14, 2004, in Jefferson City, Mo. And I believe the situation deserves harsh assessment.

Here's the finding: "The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable causes of this accident were (1) the pilots' unprofessional behavior, deviation from standard operating procedures and poor airmanship, which resulted in an inflight emergency from which they were unable to recover, in part because of the pilots' inadequate training; (2) the pilots' failure to prepare for an emergency landing in a timely manner, including communicating with air traffic controllers immediately after the emergency about the loss of both engines and the availability of landing sites; and (3) the pilots' failure to achieve and maintain the target airspeed in the double engine failure checklist, which caused the engine cores to stop rotating and resulted in the core lock engine condition. Contributing to this accident was (1) the engine core lock condition, which prevented at least one engine from being restarted, and (2) the airplane flight manuals that did not communicate to pilots the importance of maintaining a minimum airspeed to keep the engine cores rotating.