Colgan Air Flight 3407 - Legacy

Legacy

The FAA has proposed or implemented several rule changes as a result, in areas ranging from fatigue to Airline Transport Pilot Certificate (ATP) qualifications. One of the most significant has already taken effect, changing the way examiners grade checkrides in flight simulators during stalls.

Renslow's decision to pull back on the elevators when the stick began to shake, raising the nose, baffled investigators initially, since that was the exact opposite of what pilots are trained to do in that situation. Since it caused the stall, it was the reason his error was blamed for the crash. Investigators were still not sure why he had pulled when he should have pushed, as he had at least 2,000 feet (610 m) to recover with. Some have speculated that the FAA's recent education campaign on tailplane icing (where one pulls back on the yoke because it is the horizontal stabilizer and not the wing which has stalled) was to blame.

One eventually looked at the Practical Test Standards (PTS) for ATP certification, which allowed for an altitude loss of no more than 100 feet (30 m) in a simulated stall. The NTSB theorized that due to this low tolerance, pilots may have come to fear loss of altitude in a stall and so acted more to prevent that, even to the detriment of recovering from the stall itself. New standards subsequently issued by the FAA eliminate any specific amount, calling instead for "minimal loss of elevation" in a stall. One examiner has told an aviation magazine that he is not allowed to fail any applicant for losing altitude in a simulated stall so long as the pilot is able to regain the original altitude.