Psychologist: Pilot did not grasp danger

WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- The pilots of a plane that crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., were both tired when they had to deal with an unfamiliar emergency, a NASA psychologist said Thursday.

R. Key Dismukes was a witness on the final day of a National Transportation and Safety Board hearing into the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407, The New York Times reported. The plane came down on a house in February, killing all 49 people on board and one man on the ground.

Much of the evidence during the three-day hearing has focused on the condition of the pilot. Capt. Marvin Renslow and his first officer, Rebecca Shaw. Renslow, who lived in Florida, may have spent the night before the flight napping in the crew room at Newark Airport, while Shaw was on a red-eye flight from Seattle with a transfer in Memphis.

Renslow's response to a warning from the "stick-shaker" that the plane was stalling was to pull the nose up when he should have pulled it down, Dismukes said.

"I don't see any evidence that he ever understood the situation he was in," Dismukes said. "He knew something was wrong, but I don't see that he ever said, 'wait a minute, I've got to get the nose down.' "

Kathryn O'Leary Higgins, who sits on the National Transportation Safety Board, questioned Colgan's pay policies Wednesday, suggesting that Renslow and Shaw may have lived so far from the airport hey were based at for financial reasons, the Times reported.

"I think it's a recipe for an accident, and that's what we have here," Higgins said of the pay and working conditions at Colgan Air.

The airline later said that Shaw made $24,000, and an executive blamed her for her commuting practices. Mary Colgan Finnigan testified that pilots are responsible for showing up "fit for duty."

The investigation has found that neither Shaw, responsible for keeping a eye on the instruments, nor Renshaw noticed as the plane's airspeed dropped towards the stalling point.